Let's appreciate genius in all its forms

I think the brightest people in the world work for Taco Bell. Yes, Taco Bell. Let me explain the basic ingredients in everything aside from your tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and sour cream are: hard and soft taco shells, beef, chicken, regular beans, refried beans, tostada shells, and cheese. These food geniuses can put together these simple items in so many combinations. Who can’t say they are impressed when Taco Bell comes out with a new combination and slaps some fancy name on it? Just something to think about.

Take a look

http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/member/birthdayno1.php

The #1 song the week you were born. I'm a Crocodile Rock-Elton John before he "turned".

A few things from this weekend:

On occassion I come up with phrases or names that I think would make a good name for a band. My latest:

Hypocritical Dick

Had another "Nateism" this weekend. I yelled to him upstairs "Nate what are you doing?" He yells back, "I'm having a battle between good and evil!" He is the champion of good when played out with 6 inch plastic super heroes. I may strike a blow against evil and get him the new Batmobile he badly wants.

Another recent "Nateism" occurred when I asked him to look for something for me. It sort of went like this.

Kev: Nate could you look for this up there?
Nate: (after looking a little bit) I don't see it up here.
Kev: If I come up there and find it can I punch you? (totally empty threat)
Nate: In the stomach.

So he's smart enough to take a shot in the stomach instead of the face if it comes down to it. He entertains me to no end.

Strange strip mall

I saw a strip mall on Barrington Rd just north of 90 but this was no ordinary strip mall because it had some interesting tenants. It was a 8 store strip mall and five of the stores were occupied. There was a jewelry store, a dry cleaners, a Quiznos, a Subway, and a Jimmy Johns. Yes you read that correctly there are three (3) sub sandwich joints within I’m guessing maybe 1000 feet of each other. Wait it gets better the Jimmy Johns & Subway were right next to each other and the Quiznos was about two stores down from the Subway. If I bought one of those franchises I would be pissed at the leasing company for having those places in the same strip mall. By the way I strongly recommend Jimmy Johns if you haven’t had it. Better than any other chain sub joint I’ve had.

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Totally unrelated to the stip mall but I have to just say this so the public knows, and this my friend is a shoot.

If you are going to any Wal-Mart in the nation make sure that the items you take to the register have price tags on them if they need one. I was at the old Wal-Mart on Tuesday picking up this drink mix and spending a grand total of less than $4. I go into the "express lane" and get stuck behing the white trash trilogy family (white trash mom, white trash daughter, white trash son) and they are buying some sandals for the girl. The only problem is that the ones that they picked out didn't have a price tag on them. Then the super helpful and always speedy (smell that its sarcasm) had to go back to the shoe deaprtment to find the price on the shoes. Well about five minutes later the guy finally shows up and they get checked out. This happens about 10% of the time I'm in there and the people who want to buy these items just have this stupid look on their dumb faces as they look at the line that is forming behind them. WHy is there a line forming behind them? Well the good old local Wal-Mart keep prices low by employing the fewest cashiers as possible. Seriously I hate Wal-Mart. The cherry on the top of this Wal-Mart sundae is that the white trash boy (about 9 years old) had a mohawk. I wanted to hit the mom in the face with a crock pot. That's all I'm done.

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Wait I'm not done yet. Went with Nate & Jason to see the Chicago Bandits play this past Saturday. Jennie Finch wasn't there she was pitching for the national team. It was still a pretty good time and there is no way I could hit one of those pitches they throw. We were big fans of Numero Uno on the Venezuelan team for some reason and I hugged a Harry Caray impersonator. We'll make the trip back down to Lisle as it wasn't as far away as I thought originally.

Thoughts/Things I Learned This Weekend

Jennie Finch doesn’t have to be at the Bandits game to have a good time.

My son is a pro at getting autographs…seriously he’s a pro

Venezuelan softball players can all salsa dance

Everyone love to hear a chant about them

Some Harry Caray impersonators wear padding

Lisle isn’t that far from the hood

Batman will hopefully be the best movie I see this summer

Kmart still sucks

Wal-Mart still sucks too

Its not a softball game until I jam a knuckle

I’m going to probably have knee surgery later on down the line

I miss going to indy ‘rasslin shows need to find one soon, the boy wants to go again too

I believe Mike Tyson will be dead within 18 months

Here's my soundtrack

First off let me put some background on what this post is all about. Last month in Esquire they had a column by John Mayer (he writes a short one every month on music) about he got a list of songs his dad listened to over the years. It was kind of his dad’s best of list of tunes and this got me thinking. Now I don't like Mayer's music but I have to give him points for the column he wrote. I thought I should do this for Nate I could put it together set it up on a CD and so forth. Below is the list for my CD, or maybe 2 of them, and a short explanation of why I included them. I am going to leave off the Dr Dre cut since the kid is only 8 years old. I figure is he wants to get hooked up with some Dre in the future when he’s older, everything else I chose is pretty clean stuff. In the case of Disturbed and Godsmack I picked the cleanest most worthy cuts I could come up with. Feel free to discuss and or mock if you must but here’s the list:

Rhinestone Cowboy-Glen Campbell This is the first song I remember liking as a kid. Corny song but I will always remember it from my youth. I remember having the 45 when I was a kid.

Convoy-C.W. McCall Same deal as Rhinestone Cowboy except it is even cornier than that song. Maybe the reason I like rap music to this day. Early incarnation of white guys rapping.

Teddy Bear-Elvis Gotta have some Elvis on there or maybe two or three

Operator & Bad Bad Leroy Brown-Jim Croce Gotta put something from him on there we listened to a lot of it since my mom liked him "There's something in my eye you've been so much more than kind." Operator is a funny song because during the song he realizes that the chick he's trying to call is a whore.

Get Down on It & Cherish-Kool & The Gang Same deal as with Jim Croce mom was on the R&B tip before it was cool for white people to be. These songs show the funk side of them and then the slow jams side of Kool & The Gang. Not putting Celebration on here its clearly overplayed.

Kind of weird it seems like there's a serious gap in my musical memory from like 5-9th grade except for Prince but I know I was listening to more stuff than just Prince

Escape (The Pina Colada Song)-Rupert Holmes Just a really crappy song that I admittedly enjoy for all its badness.

Let's Go Crazy & 1999-Prince To this day Prince still has his stuff together. Maybe even again later on the disk with his New Power Generation stuff. I remember my brother having the Purple Rain soundtrack when he came home from the Army, he probably wouldn't admit to it today but I remember.

Something from It Takes a Nation..-Public Enemy In my opinion the greatest rap album of all time. I was huge in PE back in the day because they talked more about social issues rather than picking up the honey etc.

I Get the Job Done-Big Daddy Kane Big Daddy Kane was the one who talked about the honeys all the time.

Sledgehammer-Peter Gabriel Off one of my favorite albums of all time.

Cult of Personality- Living Colour One of my favorite bands of all time that I wish had done more they just seemed to break up and get back together but it wasn't the same. Awesome guitar riff on this song.

Desire & Pride (In the Name of Love)-U2 Always heard Desire while I was in the weight room after school. WLUP played it erry day during the same half hour, swear to God.

I'm the Type of Guy- LL Cool J Great song with the line "I'm the type of guy that says the pudding is delicious."

Jeremy & Alive-Pearl Jam Late HS years early college years more of a Pearl Jam guy over Nirvana just liked Pearl Jam's sound better. Clearly I remember picking on the boy...

something from The Chronic-Dr Dre -The best rap album put out by an individual rapper in my opinion better than anything by Pac or Biggie no doubt.

Loungin'- Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch Yep this one is on here sadly. I use to play this every Sunday morning when the ex use to visit me at college. I have no idea why probably just to annoy her.....glad to see it worked.

One-U2 see U2 notes above

Love the Way You Love Me-John Michael Montgomery First dance at my wedding has to be on there since if it wasn't for this Nate wouldn't be around. Now that song costs me 25% of my salary...yea for my huh? Most expensive song I've ever heard.

Don't Speak-No Doubt #1 song the week Nate was born

Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)-Offspring I've always been pretty fly for a white guy and an Offspring fan.

The Sickness-Disturbed Flat out rocking new rock just really dig it its one of their cleaner songs. If Nate wants to find the harder stuff he can when he's older

I Stand Alone-Godsmack Flat out rocking new rock just really dig it its one of their cleaner songs. If Nate wants to find the harder stuff he can when he's older

What a way to end a Tuesday

I'm coming out of the restroom at work and there are two ladies standing outside the guys restroom and the totally caught me checking my fly. Yeah I'm pretty classy that way.

No point here really

Let’s be honest here there’s not a lot of good stuff that I want to see in the movie theaters these days. Yes I am looking forward to the new Batman and somewhat looking forward to the Fantastic 4, but being a parent of a comic obsessed kid I know some of this excitement is just from his excitement about both movies. Every time we see a Batman Returns commercial we go over the commercial and say if there’s anything new in the commercial and kind of give it a review. They filmed part of the movie in Chicago and some of the driving sequences in Waukegan on the seldom used Amstutz Expressway. We went to check it out last summer and stood around for 3 hours and saw one scene being shot. It was a shot from the back of the Batmobile (we didn’t see the actual Batmobile) as Gotham City police cars were chasing it. We did get some pictures of Gotham PD and Gotham buses though.
I did rent a little gem this weekend though, a documentary called “Word Wars”. It the story of four guys who compete in……..Scrabble tournaments. You would think it would be pretty boring but it was actually pretty interesting. There were four guys they followed and each had an interesting story or angle involving Scrabble. All four of the guys were a little like Rainman where they could make a 7 letter word out of almost any tiles they had on their rack. They score about 500 points a game on a regular basis. If you happen to be in Blockbuster and can’t find anything worth watching give this little flick a look its pretty interesting stuff.
Looking forward to the UFC PPV this weekend. Two of the Ultimate Fighters make their debuts this weekend. I miss going to indy wrestling events as there haven’t been any on a weekend where I could fit it into my schedule. Kind of sad that IWA lost their spot in Highland, it was a heck of a drive but always a good show.