random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Need A Favor

Visit FHM and vote for Karena. I'm assuming this is SFW cheesecake stuff there, and it'd be nice to see her win.

Asking for a friend, I'm not that familiar with the world of fitness modeling myself...

[>>]posted at 1:46 PM by BG - click to email
-----------

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Levity

Or, something I'm sure only Jeremiah will find funny.

In a conference room yesterday with my boss, the VP of our group, and the procurement agent from the client company working through the issues we've outlined with their proposed contract. We get to a paragraph that details what happens if the client requests an audit of our documentation, then finds wrongdoing.

My VP: Our issue is that you'd be asking us to reimburse you for the time and materials on the audit, and the language is too broad on what "wrongdoing" means.

(It gets quiet as everyone reads and re-reads the paragraph looking for a way to reword it)

Me: Well, there's no way they're going to catch us doing anything wrong in an audit anyway, because I've been using our GWB43.org email for all communications for awhile now.

(Blank stares)

Me: Uh, I was kidding?

[>>]posted at 9:38 AM by BG - click to email
-----------

Monday, April 16, 2007

If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...

Excuse my outright shilling, but eMusic.com is a really great service. This probably doesn't come as news to anyone who listens to indie or small-label music, but for the price you're paying you get an absolute TON of value.

As a matter of fact, if you let me refer you (email me or leave a note in comments), you can get 50 free songs (and so can I) for signing up.

Anyway, I pulled the following albums:

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood - I'm in love. Great voice, great songs, just an aesthetically pleasing album from start to finish. I don't own a lot of music featuring female vocalists for some reason, so it probably takes a really exceptional album to knock my socks off - they're lying frayed and blown the fuck out across the room as I type. Great stuff, highly recommended.

(By the way, had you told me going into 2006 that I'd own three of the top ten albums from the Village Voice critic's list, and only one of them would be rap, I'd have told you that you were nuts. Dylan @ #1, Ghostface @ #3 and Neko Case @ #8, in case you were curious...)

Neko Case - Blacklisted - Solid, but not as engaging as Fox... Still worth checking out.

Townes Van Zandt - Eponymous album by the most under-exposed singer-songwriter in recent history. Country-esque, kind of a logical extension of something like Dylan's John Wesley Harding, but more personal and less abstract.

Songs:Ohia - The Magnolia Electric Company - The first cut on the album, "Farewell Transmission," is worth the price of admission alone. This was a recommendation from my friend Rachel, who's seeing these guys open for Son Volt this weekend in Louisville. Songs:Ohia is Jason Molina's band, and he operates in a dark alt-country sort of space, but it's not as inaccessible as all that. While there are a couple of duds on the disc (the two songs Molina doesn't sing), the rest is well above-average.

Jimmy Heath - Really Big! and The Thumper - I have a soft spot in my heart for the jazz legends I've managed to see perform live (Max Roach, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Heath), but Jimmy in particular is a personal favorite from that group. He was as good a composer and arranger as he was a soloist, and he was pretty damn good at soloing to begin with. Really Big! features a ten-piece band that sounds even bigger, and is so perfectly arranged and entertaining that I'm pissed I hadn't picked it up previously. The Thumper is also excellent, featuring a smaller group and more straight-ahead blues bop through Heath's compositional prism. Recommended.

Thelonious Monk - Monk's Music - Coltrane AND Coleman Hawkins AND Art Blakey, plus such Monk classics as "Well, You Needn't," "Ruby, My Dear," "Epistrophy," and "Crepuscule With Nellie" marks this album as essential for any serious jazz collection. Sadly, I think this acquisition marked (something like) my 150th album, instead of one of my first twenty. I rue every day I passed this one by.

Rachel's birthday was a couple weeks back, and I picked her up the tickets to Son Volt/Magnolia Electric Company (who used to be called Songs:Ohia) as my present to her. Because I'm good like that, you know. Anyway, I spent a couple hours on the phone with her yesterday, trying in vain to come up with a good reason we're living twelve hours apart. I don't think either of us would want to drop our lives for each other, nor do I think either of us think that's a good idea, but that we can't spend a Sunday afternoon splitting a plate of nachos in a sports bar somewhere is simply tragic.

I can rationalize away the geography and the personal issues that are red warning flags in the way here, but fuck if the conversation we can brew between us sometimes isn't enough of a turn on to keep me coming back. Plus, any time I can make a woman laugh, it feels like a little victory. She might be coming back out here over Memorial Day, so I guess I got that to look forward to.

Trying to eat better lately, but jumped off the wagon full-force this weekend. Baked a pizza on Saturday (using whole milk mozzarella in part, which is how you get yourself a greasy-ass slice or six), made Chinese on Sunday. Of course, I can fool myself into saving calories/fat/sodium due to making the stuff myself, but who are we kidding? I just didn't want another goddamn Healthy Choice entree.

Although, to give the HC entree people credit, the Chicken Margharita variety isn't all that terrible.

So, instead of griping about the half-hour I spent with Bob Schieffer and Dick Cheney watching "Face the Nation" this weekend (Liar!), I'll say something nice instead: When Cheney stares down an interviewer and starts curling that smirk in the corners of his ~~lying little~~ mouth, it positively shows that he's listening attentively to the person with whom he's speaking.

Because, you know, listening shows he's engaged in the conversation, right?

Although, he could probably use those listening skills to pay attention to Harry Reid and not lie to people about Reid's intentions regarding troop funding.

WTF Hokies?

So the boss and our group VP are coming into town tomorrow for further discussions that could make this job a whole helluva lot better, busier, more fun and more highly compensated in the near future. Obviously, there's a shot that it doesn't work out for me, but today's all about positivity, right? I've put the search on hold for a couple weeks while this shakes out, and I actually (and honestly) think it's looking good for me and my company at the moment. So tomorrow, I get to meet the VP, get looped in to discussions about expansion I haven't been a part of before, and get a free lunch out of the deal to boot. I'm thinking Italian.

I got to spend some time on the phone with Jeremiah on Friday, and as we were comparing the construction of our respective tinfoil hats, I was drinking double SoCo Manhattans. I think we talked for about 90 minutes, and I think I remember pouring four, then a fifth when we were done talking. Christ almighty did I get likkered up. I'm pretty sure that at some point of the conversation I was calling hedgehogs fascists and accused Harvey Fierstein of plotting to overthrow the Pope.

He found my theories intriguing, and wished to subscribe to my newsletter.

I spent most of Saturday feeling like shit, and between the weather, "Face the Nation" and my lack of motivation, Sunday was a wash too. I was a cranky motherfucker all day, and my only salvation was talking to Rachel. Of course, the last 30 minutes of that was just back-and-forth lamentations that we couldn't both just call off work tomorrow (er, today) and spend all day in bed together, so there was a modest amount of misery mixed in as well. Then "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" was a rerun, and I decided to watch that new Fox show "Drive" instead, enjoying a few Yuenglings along the way.

Show sucked. Beer was good. Still wish I could be in my pajamas somewhere in the middle of Indiana instead. That's a good thought...

[>>]posted at 2:24 PM by BG - click to email
-----------