as kip dynamite would say...

"that's what i'm talking about." check it out:

http://www.accoutrements.com/products/11072.html

i have one of these in my possession, and big pants now has a mascot. speaking of big pants, the band now has a blog/website. it's in my list of links on the right.

i fixed the bad link to info about my new laptop. see previous post below for the dell latitude review.

i am off tomorrow. laundry during the morning, a nice lunch with jenn where i'll instruct her on ripping songs and loading them into her mp3 player, and then in the early evening i'll be hoping to catch another one of these (believe it or not, mine from last week was a little bigger).

gonna get myself connected

ladies and gentlemens, check out my new college-provided laptop.

i was approved for a laptop (since i do so many instruction sessions outside of the library) in the new go-round of computers this summer, and it came in yesterday. i transferred everything of importance from my old desktop, installed the programs i need from the network and now i'm good to go. i am stoked, and completely mobile.

jenn and i were offered free tickets to rockygrass this weekend, but it just seemed like a hassle, so we declined.

big pants plays braun's friday night. russell and i are doing the early evening braun's set on saturday the 6th, just the two of us. and big pants has 3 more dates at mambo before the summer is over. we're hoping to capitalize on the exposure and get some good paying ski season gigs this winter.

that's all for now.

is god trying to drown steamboat?

the heavens opened at about 4:45 this afternoon, and 40 mph wind gusts ushered in one of the most amazing torrential downpours i have ever seen anywhere. more violent than the midwestern thunderheads i grew up with. more ferocious than the lightning storms above tucson. just a ridiculous amount of rain - for the first time i truly understood the term "sheets of rain" - in what was really only a 25 minute time span.

it was stunning and impressive and a little scary.

speaking of stunning and impressive: i caught the biggest trout of my life on saturday. a 21- maybe 22-inch brown out of the yampa in town. from a super sweet secret hole that i can't wait to show geno next time he comes out. anyway, my buddy bruce was there with me and he fishes a lot. he said that he's seen longer fish pulled out of the yampa, but he didn't think he'd ever seen a heavier fish. this sucker had the hooked jaw, the big shoulders - just a fat breeding male. bruce guessed 5 pounds, he said he was pretty sure it was a wild fish (not stocked), and probably 5 or 6 years old. the brown ran out a whole bunch of line about halfway through the fight, and it was the first time a trout had physically moved my arms and not just my flyrod. it took about 5 or 6 minutes to get him in, and after i let him go i was shaking.

in other news, i need to post a correction: the person complaining about me not writing about jenn often enough was not debby, but our good friend karin in denver. my apologies.

mi esposa

our friend deb-o-rah in illinois complained that i don't write enough stuff about my lovely wife, jenn. well, it is my blog after all, but i thought i'd dedicate a post or two to jenn.

jenn and jamie are headed down to fort collins this weekend for a sand doubles volleyball tournament in fort collins. which leaves me all alone tonight and missing jenn. but big pants plays mambo again this evening, so that'll be a good distraction. anyway, jenn and her sister both played college volleyball - jenn at university of south carolina spartanburg and jamie at elmhurst college - and they both still play whenever they can. (check out jenn's peach belt conference player of the year honors for 1994). they'll play the breckenridge tournament the weekend of the 13th, then end the summer with the motherlode in aspen over labor day weekend. i like to crack open a beer, put a wide-brimmed hat on, and watch 'em kick butt from a lawn chair. that's about all the volleyball i play these days.

some funny things about jenn:

* she has an addiction to product: lotions, hair care, perfumes, you name it. as a general rule, she won't buy any of this stuff if it comes from a grocery store.

* she cannot keep the interior of a car clean. impossible.

* she demands that you tell her crucial plot points in books she is reading that you've already read. case in point: she is reading the new harry potter book, which i've already finished, and was genuinely upset with me for awhile because i would not tell her who harry's love interest is.

* she has so much stuff that she carts between home and work that she has given up on bags, and now uses a laundry tub instead. no joke.

in good will hunting, robin williams character talks about how it's the little eccentricities and idiosyncracies (sp?) that make up the meat of a relationship. that is so true. these things greatly endear us toward our respective others as the years go by.

at least i hope they do. if they don't, then i need to stop talking at the television and letting my fingernail clippings fly all over the living room.

desert island disc

the steamboat pilot has a weekend section called 4-points, and every friday they ask a local to list 10 to 20 of their favorite songs they'd put on a mix CD. this friday is my turn. picking and choosing was not at all easy. after much deliberation, here's my list (the comments were for my benefit, and will be left out of the paper):

“Fool’s Gold,” – The Stone Roses (10 minutes of perhaps the most amazing, all-natural, non-electronic beat ever, with some damn good trippy guitars to boot)

“Jesus, etc.,” – Wilco (lyrics that evoke 9/11, yet predate the catastrophe by a year)

“Sodom, South Georgia,” – Iron & Wine (so beautiful, so sad)

“Army,” – Ben Folds Five (“grew a mustache and a mullet, got a job at chick-fil-a”)

“Whiskey Bottle,” – Uncle Tupelo (the album this song comes from virtually invented country punk, and spawned the entire “no depression” alt-country movement)

“Double Trouble,” – The Roots feat. Mos Def (lyrical linguistics, yo)

“Get Miles,” – Gomez (Ben Ottwell has the best freakin’ voice in rock n’ roll right now)

“I Think She Likes Me” – Treat Her Right (Fronted by Mark Sandman, who later went on to greater fame with Morphine; these guys were bluesier)

“Hannah & Gabi,” – The Lemonheads (I’d take pretty much any of Evan Dando’s songs)

“She’s the One,” – The Beta Band (if The Beatles had grown up in Scotland with electronica and ecstasy, they’d sound like the Beta Band)

“B-Boy Bouillaibaisse,” – The Beastie Boys (Paul’s Boutique is a sampled masterpiece made from the junk heap of pop culture)

“Lo-Fi Tennessee Mountain Angel,” – Whiskeytown (how can a country lament be so punk rock?)

“Watching the Detectives,” – Elvis Costello (I’ve been absolutely infatuated with this song for months)

“What More Can I Say,” – Jay-Z w/sampled Beatles beats by DJ Danger Mouse (Beatles-sampled beats and Jay-Z lyrics; you can still download the entire illegal “grey album” on the internet)

“(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” – R.E.M. (Michael Stipe and company do country better than most of Nashville)

“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” – The Beatles (I just love Abbey Road)

sometimes, dreaming sucks

i had the... most... awful... dream last night.

i dreamt i had inoperable brain cancer. here's the kicker - it was one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming, but you think you might be dreaming about something that may have happened the day before. so you're all wrapped up in this infinitely mirrored hallway of fiction reflecting back on reality, with questions floating underneath it all - is the dream real; is it partially real; has my dream simply been influenced by something i've seen or read; am i seeing the future in a dream - do i even believe in that?

i woke up completely scared and freaked out. not a good night of sleep at all.

in this case, i think my dream may have indeed been influenced by the movie we watched last night - million dollar baby. pretty good, but i don't know why there was such a tremendous amount of hype about this thing. maybe it's just because a decent movie comes out of hollywood so infrequently these days that critics just go nuts.

anyway, without giving away the ending too obviously, the resolution is pretty desperate, and i think that reflected itself in my gray matter.

having had such a sad and shitty dream, i just wanted to take this opportunity to tell my friends and family i love you all very much.

maybe tonight i'll dream about big pants playing the bonnaroo festival sometime soon.

who the hell is shaun william ryder?!

tomorrow is our first gig at a bar/restaurant other than braun's.

in honor of timmy and our love of the madchester era, tonight at practice i will try and convince my fellow big pants members to learn kinky afro by the happy mondays (timmy, click here too for interviews of shaun and mani).

viva madchester! viva the hacienda!

i've been used...

by a nerdy ph.d. student at MIT.



fellow bloggers, give it a go.

pictures of poot

in anticipation of greatly regretting my decision to not drive back to illinois and see tim, i've been going through pictures of my oldest friend. i brought my 3 favorites to the office, scanned them, and now present them here for your viewing pleasure. see below.

sorry i'll miss ya, dudie. but goddamn, these pictures make me smile.

ever since i took this picture four and a half years ago, i've promised timmy that i'd get it on the web to embarrass him. it's about time. this was taken at the bottom of blackfoot bowl at grand targhee, late february, 2001. in case you didn't notice, he's flipping me the bird. 

i love this one. the healthy amout of chest hair is the clincher. this is the road trip where i moved timmy and all his worldly possessions up to jackson for an exciting 6 month stay (see previous picture). flagstaff convenience store, 2000. 

make no mistake about it, people - these dudies are getting down. probably one of my fave pics of all time. wedding reception, 2002. 

dancing hippies rule

big pants played art in the park on saturday. it was an 8 song, 45 minute set. we started off very nervous, and i flubbed the chord progression on 'rodeo clowns'. but after that we settled down, and rocked the crowd. we had some dancing hippies from oak creek (i've heard them called oak creatures), a little town about 18 miles south of steamboat. and we also had some little 2 year olds getting down in their diapers.

dancing hippies and future deadheads. sweet.

all in all, if you count the other people milling around artists' booths in the park, we probably played to about 1000 people. there were maybe 150 right in front of us. nerve-wracking but fun.

there was a great turnout - the weather was clouded over and that helped cool things off, but it never rained. so the event went off without any big hitches. jenn did a wonderful job of planning the whole thing, and her calm, solution-oriented approach in stressful situations was really something to see. she put out fire after fire, and kept her cool at times where i would have lost it.

in other news, i mountain biked the buffalo pass/spring creek loop on sunday, in between helping jenn at the concessions booth. it was a real ass kicker. pop, you remember where we went to fish for brook trout that morning last september? up on buff pass? i rode up there. hoooooly crap. i may never do that again.

that's what's new.

what's the best part of a chicken!!??

if you know the answer to this, then you know my friend timmy potten. unfortunately, due to his exhibitionist tendencies, probably a little too intimately.

"we love it where we from but we kick it where we at." this is a lyric by the digable planets (who are back together and touring this summer, by the way). i've always interpreted it to mean "don't forget your roots, but be happy where you are." which brings me to my current conundrum: timmy, one of the few people in this world for whom i would give my left nut (this nugget of a euphemism is one of timmy's favorites, as he is one of the lewdest and crudest and funniest people i know), is coming home from germany for a week toward the end of july. timmy is my roots, but i think this time around i'm forced to "kick it where i'm at."

now, as much as i would like to get home and golf with timmy and uncle john and tell nasty jokes and drink lots of beer, i just don't think it's going to be possible this summer. like michael jordan and his first three retirements, i'm not ruling it out. but - again, like michael and his first three retirements - i'm about 98 percent sure i won't be able to make it. the usual excuses prevail: not a lot of dough would require us to drive, if we drive that's more time off than i should probably take, etc.

so, timmy, if you're reading: you are, without question, one of my nearest and dearest friends. i apologize for not making it home to see you. we are young, we won't always live this far apart, and there is time yet for us to hang out, golf, drink beer...

and tell fart jokes.

what is up as of now

-finished inventory last week. we have roughly 22,885 items in our collection, worth approximately 1.14 million dollars.

-got my mountain bike out of jamie's storage closet on friday, finally. it was locked in there and jamie's landlord never gave her a closet key. i talked to her condo management group and they met me there. we jimmied it open with a screwdriver. i didn't do it personally, but after watching i feel pretty sure i could duplicate the questionable task if absolutely necessary. so...

-i am a mountain biker again. rode around town and on some of the singletrack loops on howelsen on saturday. commuted to work on tuesday. i haven't ridden my bike with any regularity since i became all citified during our time in denver.

-big pants has a website. actually it's a blog. rather than pay for sever space and put a page together (though i do enjoy designing pages), i just figured we could create a free blog and use it as a contact point for anyone we meet who might want to book us.

-speaking of big pants, we play art in the park this saturday. an elevated bandshell stage and a 4:15 time slot (thanks, jenn!) ought to get us a considerable crowd. tommy's gone, so chris walsh is filling in on bass. we're trying to get him comfortable with enough songs for us to play braun's later that day, too.

-no major weight loss, but sticking with my program. feel a lot healthier.

-i'm trying to learn some slide guitar in open tunings from a book by this guy. saw him play at the depot last week and he was pretty impressive.

-new lyric that will become a song this week:
groaning pipes in the walls at night
you told me tomorrow
hold the light until it's just right
when you leave i'll follow

that's all for now. you keep reading and i'll keep writing.