(Turn the) Amp Higher Weekend!

Beck took off after work on Friday evening to go camping in a gigantic hole in the ground somewhere north-ish of here. Which left me to my own devices, namely a Tradition Strat and a Peavey Amp. The neighbors got a heady dose of some Sweet Leaf, yes they did!!! Besides an undue amount of evening guitar wankery, I've also enlightened the nearby folks with a great selection of high-graded albums (85 and above). Here's a quick peak at some of the tunes that have been emanating from the apartment at solid but respectful volumes:

Television - Marquee Moon
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Sleater Kinney - One Beat
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Dismemberment Plan - Is Terrified
The Police - Outlandos D'Amour

Good times, and nary a Simon-Garfunkel composition to be heard! When the cat's away, you know. Speaking of Mr. Simon, check out this tale from Los Lobos. But wait, I thought Paul Simon was a super great guy! Didn't he save 9/11 or something? Yikes. Actually, without hearing Simon's side, I guess judgment should stay reserved, but damn, if that's close to what went down, it's like when I came back to bed someone's taken my song. No good.

So besides watching copious amounts of baseball and basketball the last couple of days, I made it down to Dan and Christina's yesterday. We drove around the corner to a park behind their house - Dan dubbed it "Baja del Casa," which reminded me a lot of this:

Nice little wooded park with a short 9 hole disc golf course. And before you accuse me of redundancy, take a look at yourself - the course was physically short, in that most of the holes were about 200 feet or so. The holes were all lined with short, dense trees, and so a smart person would have used rollers or thrown low line drives. Which we did for the most part, but I did manage to launch one straight into a kite-eating tree and the disc was lodged. That didn't stop me from getting my idiot on and throwing two more discs into the tree after it - egad. Luckily, Xtina aka "Brass Monkey" climbed the tree and got everything except the original disc down. It's pretty much a given at this point that I lose a disc every time I go out. I guess I just have to accept that, like greens fees or something. Sigh.

Anyways, good times - Dan and I disc golfed while Christina "Rice golfed," which means whacking a tennis ball with a real life actual golf club. At one point Christina asked if she should shoot for the basket or just the pole; Dan replied that at Baja del Casa, there are no rules. I'm pretty sure that Dan inadvertently just declared himself Native American and opened a casino there. SO a lot of fun, and we even brought Elliot along - he learned the joys of lapping water from an upside down frisbee. And then we watched a hyper-competitive whiffle ball game. Yeah.

Headed back to D&C's to eat some pizza (Linner!) and catch the end of the Dbacks game. Then Christina showed us what was what on Guitar Hero (though I'm pretty sure that Dan won points for setting the new high score on "Cherub Rock" and I won a few for Axling and Slashing on Welcome to the Jungle. I basically have one talent). They had a party to attend in the evening, so I headed home and watch the Pistons win and SA get crushed before heading to be early-ish (about 10:30).

Woke up in the middle of the night dying of thirst - I blame "Dan and the Last Piece of Pizza," a tale wrought upon me by Danimal that, yes, insisted upon itself. And in my 4 am stupor I ran into the ironing board that someone, let's call her "Beck," left out in the living room. And the iron fell off the ironing board and onto my foot. And there was much rejoicing cursing! If I had been in the South, I would have said "'Ch!!!!" Seriously, I'm pretty lucky, what with the darkness and all, that I didn't break my foot. I responded to my attacker by thumping the ironing board with my fist - the lock on the board has long been broken, so instead of collapsing like a normal board, the high quality metal legs bent. Argh. So my errand list for the morning grew one item longer.

Fortunately I live in the 21st century and the land of infinite commerce. So when I woke up at 5:45 AM - am I still on East Coast time? - I went to the Fry's To The Right. And bought a new board - at 6 in the mo'n! Six in the m'on! Wow, the triumphant feeling of carrying a large board around an empty AM store. I was so buzzed I didn't even yell at the lady when she lied and told me I had saved four dollars.*

* - Serious pet peeve - liars at the grocery store. "By using your card, you saved four dollars." No, I saved zero; you merely didn't overcharge me by four dollars. Or you didn't overcharge me by x+4 dollars, because I'm pretty sure the 74 cents of materials and the 27 cents of malaysian labor that went into this ironing board do not warrant its 15 dollar price. Regardless, I'm not saving anything, and worse, you are using me as a marketing data whore and not compensating me. These freaking "VIP" cards - systemic and fraudulent! This is a topic for another post - but a certain friend of mine is piggybacking a business plan on these cards! Ayee! I am torn between support for my friend and hatred for the system. The road to Orwellian nightmare is paved with grocery store VIP cards; that's all I'm saying. Grin while you comment.

So now I'm back at home, ironing board in locked and upright position in the closet, awaiting the start of a 9:30 AM basketball game and the return of my beck later today. Ultimate later perhaps; there are two tournaments going on this weekend that I had to skip, so there may be a paucity of pickup players. So we'll see if I feel like driving.

Otherwise, here's a classic skit that will get you in the mood for the next post: