Take me out to the balllllgaaaame....

Are you mocking me?
Originally uploaded by dlew022.

For my birthday last year, my wife got me 20 Giants games. It was such a sweet thing to do!! See, when the G-men moved into their new digs, I took out a student loan and bought season tickets. I got RIGHT behind homeplate but WAY up there.

However...they are GREAT seats. You can see the entire field, the scoreboard as well as McCovey Cove and the Bay Bridge. My mom has tickets that are like, 12 rows behind first base and mine are way better. They kinda look like this shot...



When we moved to L.A. I was splitting my seats with a friend. She got the rest of them since I moved. As my luck would have it, that was the year the Giants went to the World Series and I was in L.A. with 1 million front running ANGELS fans and unable to see any games in SF.

It was extremely painful. I wanted to be there so bad....my grandpa and I went to zillions of games as a kid and I couldn't be there to share this with him. It sucked. Lucily the L.A. games were sold out and I missed game 6. Just thinking about it...ugh.



Anyway....for my bday, I got to pick any 20 games from my original seats. Being the smart Giants fan I am, I chose only a few from before the All-Star break but I backloaded my picks because I thought Barry would be back. Yet now....it doesn't look like he's coming back this year at all. He said today maybe in September...but that won't give him enough time to get into 2nd place in home runs with 714. He only needs 10.

So now I have like 11 games for a SHITTY baseball team. There's really no one I like on the team...AT ALL. I don't even like Barry that much but how often in your life can you see a guy hit his 715th homer and move into 2nd place ALL TIME.



The worst part is, the Giants are like 14 games below .500 and only 7 games out of first! They can win this thing and we kind of promised the woman who sold us tickets we'd buy into playoff seats. Ugh...NOT interested. I can barely muster the interest make it to a regular game let alone a high pressure embarrassment for my boys in Orange.

It's quite a conundrum and I feel bad going away when the going gets tough. Bt it ain't cheap to go to a game and getting there is flat out boring. Next year though...it's ON!

Who you gonna believe...?

Who you gonna believe...?
Originally uploaded by dlew022.

So now that the dust has settled on the cancellation, we got the alt.country Rashoman happenning. First, I read this:
We're a big fan of the drinking game that accompanies the announcement of a musical tour cancellation -- you know, the one that forces players to down shots every time the words "exhaustion" or "dehydration" comes up.

While neither of those bon mots came up in the declaration that Ryan Adams was opting out of the last few dates of his West coast tour -- the rather limp "illness" excuse was proffered instead-- it seems as if Mr. Adams was quite "dehydrated" the day before bailing on the trek.

In addition to his usual onstage threats of violence against audience members -- some for being too loud, some for shushing the noisemakers --the sunshine boy also turned on his bandmates, firing guitarist J.P. Bowersock and treating the others to tirades along the lines of "How many scotches does it take? What the fuck? I think I was the only one playing in the right key there, but I don't know. I mean, I only wrote the fucking song and everything, so I should know what fucking key it's in."

As performance art goes, we'd rate that outburst a
C-plus -- good enough to pass muster on the Bowery, but a few cuts short of meriting inclusion in that Aristocrats sequel . . .

O.K.,,, now that was the story as I had heard it from Jason and from various sources online that were at the show. Plus, it fits the R.A. M.O. as it were.

So I then decide to go to his site and see what Ryan has to say. Read it for yourselves. I guess there's some Indonesian junk that's going 'round.

Why can't anybody just be honest anymore? Rafael Palmeiro, Karl Rove, Bill Clinton and now Ryan Adams. Is there no accountability for anyones actions anymore???

One good thing is that now I can attend the Bob Schneider and Shelby Lynne concert at Bimbos Sunday.

I do love that lil Shelby Lynne...

I blame myself, really...

Ohhh...Ryan. You dickhead.
Originally uploaded by dlew022.

So after raving about how Ryan Adams is just my kind of nutty musician, the guy has an Axl Rose sized meltdown and CANCELS his West coast tour!

I found an odd journal entry (with GREAT photos) here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/ryan_adams/354467.html . I say odd because this girl acts like she just saw a GREAT show when clearly, it was pretty shitty. I don't think it's sarcasm either. Some people (namely girls) will get snowed by any skinny musician on-stage.



Apparently he proceeded to get wasted and then berate his bass player who then walked off. Today it was announced that "due to illness," the rest of the tour is cancelled. Yeah...the bass player got sick of enabling a drunk fuck and quit.

He also berated the audience, but I don't really blame him for that. See, Ryan Adams is like that really weird kid you couldn't help but tease in grade school. When I was a kid, we teased this freak named Carl. He'd be all calm while we harrassed him, but you could sense the temperature rising. Finally he's just start chasing you and as you pulled away, he'd hop on one foot pull off a shoe and huck it at you! It was awesome! That's like going to see Ryan Adams.

The guy will spazz out over anything. I once saw him grab his mic stand and turn it around with his back to the audience because they wouldn't shut up when he was playing an acoustic song. Folk singer Robbie Fulks fanned the flames when he said he's pay people CASH to yell out "Summer of 69" at RYAN Adams (not Bryan Adams) shows.



I dunno....I'm annoyed now but I feel worse for my friend Jason who got me the tix. He's way more stoked on the new album than me, and he got us SECOND ROW! I guess when you mess with a drunk, you get the barf...or something.

Here's something the other tour guides won't tell you...

BigGulp
Originally uploaded by dlew022.

I have a thing with 7-11. I love that place! I eat their food whether I'm drunk or sober...well, except the nachos which I once made the mistake of eating while sober.

Never again!
Their sandwiches are surprisingly good as well.

I usually peruse the aisles just to keep up to date on what's new in snacking and it's a good thing I did.

About a month ago I was coming home from work and I stopped at 7-11

like I usually do for a Big Gulp. It was HOT so I was craving ice cream as well. As I looked in the ice cream case I saw an odd shaped cup. I took it out and looked at it and...damn, someone is a GENIUS.

The cup is filled with ice cream and what you do is, tear off the paper cover and slip the ice cream cup on top of your Big Gulp cup. Then you tear off the other paper lid and press out the ice cream into your cup. THEN...you fill the Big Gulp with whatever soda you choose.

I'm a big fan of
Barq's rootbeer though and for some reason, the 7-11's here have downgraded to IBC rootbeer. So I've been hitting the Coke floats pretty heavy. If you find yourself in 7-11 be sure to check out the "Soda Float." It's well worth it.

If you believe there's nothing to see...nothing to do...

You're probably right. Sweet Jesus my life has been dull. Even getting drunk is boring these days. There hasn't been much in the way of shows or movies or ANYTHING so my life is on cruise control. It sucks that I need those things to make my life more interesting...but that's the truth.

Granted, during the summer I actually have to work close to 8 hours a day so that makes me sleepy. During the school year, life's much easier. Work is fun though....although it's NOT what I want to be doing. Anyway...moving on...

Lets see....some CD's I've been really digging are:

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals "Stone Roses." Now, Ryan takes alot of shit but I think music needs more people like him. All the loose cannons in music are dead, boring or shushed as lunatics. Sure, he's a spoiled baby alot of times but he's also prolific as hell. He's already got ANOTHER album coming out in September and this album is a double disc! My buddy Jason just hooked me up with 2nd row tix to see him in Oakland at the Paramount so that's totally cool. Although I think Ry is in a Grateful Dead phase right now. he even has a beard! Ack. Remind me to tell you my Ryan Adams in Penngrove story. Good times.

Another cool album is Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous." To be honest, I'm not sure what I love about this album...it's pretty freeking strange. Yet it's strange in an accessible way. I love the singer Jenny Lewis (no relation....yet) and her kind of harsh/honest lyrics. Her voice makes me feel happy too. I also love the way the band is so ecclectic. Good stuff...lame reason for liking them. Sorry, best I can do.

As usual my CD player is chock full of Wilco and the Replacements...but I've been listening to probably my #3 favorite band of ALL TIME Slobberbone alot lately. They recently "broke up" but have essentially reformed with a new bass player and apparently a keyboard player and named themselves "The Drams." I thought that was a lame name but apparently a "dram" is that measuring device used by bartenders to make drinks. That's my boys! I actually got to see The Bone's 3rd to last show at SXSW last year and it was O.K. Coulda been better. Me and Pete were there and once the 25 Lone Star Lights (each) wore off, we felt kind of duped by the whole thing. Plus, I crapped my shirt. A story for another day.....