It's by an Aussie band called Sick Puppies that will be headlining an event at Crash Mansion downtown this Saturday night. The video is brilliant and smart and funny, and I hate them because I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first.
Also, I did see a moose. Actually, a family of them, on the side of Interstate 89 around 7:30 this morning. They are large animals. As I saw them, I started thinking, if one of these animals was injured and taken to the veterinarian, which kind of veterinary specialist would take the lead: large animal or wildlife? It's a not-so intersting quandary, but a revealing look at my psyche.
There was an industry conference, so I rented a car and headed up to Stowe. The drive was awesome, just a little over 5 hours with a stop for gas. Again, I'm an idiot, and didn't bring my camera, so I have no pictures.
I'm a little peeved that I'm not going to get the chance to hit the slopes, but I'm only going to be here until Tuesday morning, and tomorrow's eaten up by the conference. What kills me most is that the powder looks awesome. They got snow here yesterday and the weather forecast has flurries for tomorrow. It's cold at night and the days have been in the 30s. Basically, the weather is perfect.
Meanwhile, according to the sign that I saw on Interstate 89, just before the exit for Stowe, this is moose country. I haven't seen any yet, but dammit, I will see one before I leave.
What Are You Going To Do? Spend Your Life Collecting Silver Surfer Comics?
The trailer for the new Fantastic Four movie looks awesome. I'm hoping they learned some lessons from the first one (i.e. make it not suck). The first movie was horrendous, right down to Dr. Doom being just about the worst comic villain on the big screen through this recent spate of comics turned movies (thought admittedly, I've only seen about 50% of them).
If you haven't seen the trailer, check it out below:
Anyone else think that the Shins are among the best bands making music today? I'm in the process of ingesting their most recent album, Wincing the Night Away. It's good, but thus far, I'd still place it third behind Chutes Too Narrow and Oh, Inverted World in that order. It's a great album and I assume that I'll just need a little more time listening to it to figure out where it belongs in the hierarchy of their albums.
They descend upon New York City in 3 weeks and yours truly will be in the audience. The seats that I got aren't great, because I was at the vet with my dog for a 10am appointment (tickets went on sale at 11am) and she didn't actually get around to my appointment until 10:45am. By the time I got home, it was almost 11:30am and the best seats that I could get were in the rafters. Whatever. They're in the theater and that's all that matters.
Is it too early to mention that I have an unhealthy love of American Idol? Probably, but this is my forum, so screw you.
I won't bore you with details, my favorites or predictions. All that I want to say is this:
There's a kid named Sunjaya Malakar that sang the song, "Knocks Me Off My Feets," by Stevie Wonder. We can talk about how awesome Stevie is and how amazing you have to be to not look like a pale imitation of him later, but the important part is that song has the lyric, "Darling, I don't want to bore you" several times. So my wife tees up her Simon Cowell impression and says, "Listen, that song said you didn't want to bore me and I was very bored." We had a good laugh over it. The song ends, and he's getting judged (eviscerated would probably be a better term), and Simon says, "The irony here is that the most common phrase in that song was 'I don't want to bore you' and I was completely and totally bored."
The bottom line: my wife is a witch or some kind of magic-bearing sorceress.
Last night, we went out to a new Greek place on 79th St. called Kefi that had just reopened after scaling down their menu and their prices. It was great. Not terribly expensive (you could probably get out of there at about $60 for a couple, including one drink a piece), and the food was excellent, especially the appetizers.
Greek food is one of those cuisines that is just completely overlooked in the "Best Type of Food" discussion. Whenever that discussion happens, you get a lot of votes for Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Mexican. Those are the big four. No one ever says anything outside of those things. Now, granted, I'm not six. I don't ask people what their favorite color is and I don't ask them what their favorite food is, but it comes up sometimes and just once, I'd like to hear someone say something other than those four things. You people are boring me with your banal food favorites.
Last night, SuperDiamond came to Irving Plaza, so we headed down there to catch the show. We were really lucky because we knew the manager of the venue, so she hooked us up with free tickets, VIP passes and some drink tickets. The whole night was essentially gratis, which automatically makes things awesome. What's better than free stuff? Sexual intercourse, perhaps, and that's never free. I'm a little annoyed that I didn't bring my camera, so I don't have any pictures of us enjoying the band or the venue, which is one of the better places to see a concert in the city. We were told that 1100 people were there last night, but it didn't feel that crowded, not on the floor or upstairs.
I've seen these guys 11 times before, so there were no surprises. The band still rocks pretty hard, which is weird because they're playing Neil Diamond tunes. They play pretty much everything, including songs that you wouldn't necessarily know that he wrote unless you're a fan. On this dozenth (is this a word?) time, it was still extremely enjoyable. I was there with a dude who dives with sharks, and he called it "intense," which seems weird because he described diving with sharks as "fun times."
Did anyone catch the game last night? The Rangers are flying lately. I love the Cullen-Ortmeyer-Dupuis line. That's some serious speed there. And Marcel Hossa is playing like he's channeling his brother's scoring prowess.
For years, it seemed like Glen Sather was sleeping at the wheel, but you have to give him credit for the two latest acquisitions. He acquired a second line winger (Sean Avery) and a third line winge (Pascal Dupuis) for almost nothing. A couple of a prospects and a draft pick to LA for Avery and an ineffective, underperforming Adam Hall to Minnesota for Dupuis. I can't believe that I'm saying this, but those are two extremely savvy moves for a guy that hadn't made one since 1990.
There's work to be done. They're still 3 points out of a playoff spot, but they've got games in hand on the teams in front of them and if they keep playing with this passion, it'll be a fun stretch run. I'm looking forward to Sunday's game against the Blackhawks at the Garden.
Hello. I'm Geoff Wolinetz. This is my online home.
I was sitting at my desk the other day, and it suddenly struck me that I needed another blog/website to ignore. I am currently ignoring several websites (including the formidable Senor Wences), but there's no question that there is room for one more. I can ignore websites with the best of them.
Since the real issue is that I don't write enough (despite co-editing a daily website and co-authoring a book), I figured I'd take one last crack at this Weblog thing. If an eponymous website that no one is going to read doesn't get me writing, what will?
