Chasin' the Clouds Away

At present time the sky is filled with some really crazy clouds. According to my brother, these are mammatus clouds. The word origin for mammatus might explain why my friend Mike described the weather conditions as "a sky of boobies." My co-worker likened them to "cartoon butts." In any case, I took some pictures and I'll put them up later.

My latest columnis in the paper today. Again, the headline is not mine, but it sounds more like something I'd write than "bastion." One of the DJ's used the word "bastion" on the Zone today and I was quite pleased.

In music news, still loving 99.9 but I think it would do some good if they took out all the Sheryl Crow and Matchbox 20 (and other "Mix" music) and replaced it with some rap or some early 90's pop. I want some Color Me Badd! I was watching I Love the 90's last night (amusing, but not as good as the 80's so far) and they talked about CMB. I hadn't heard I Adore Mi Amor in quite some time and would love to hear it in its entirety. In other I Love the 90's news, I love Dominic Monaghan (one of the hobbits, not sure if it's Pippin or Merry, but he's definitely the hot one). His line regarding the implausibility of Vanilla Ice's lyrics ("How he be back with a brand new invention if it's his first song?") was classic.

I have a few favorite songs currently. In alternative music, I'm liking Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" and Modest Mouse's "Float On." I like to think of these songs as "O.C. Rock" and am happy to hear "alternative music" that's not Nickelback or Three Doors Down, who are quickly joining Smashmouth on the "Most Hated Bands" list. It's tough to get up there, I hate Smashmouth as much as I hate corn dogs. And, of course, peas. In pop music, I love Ashlee Simpson's "Pieces of Me." Yes, I know her voice SUCKS, and she seems like quite an idiot on her MTV show, but whatever buttons they press to make her sound good in her recorded music are working quite well, and the lyrics are so catchy. Speaking of catchy, I present to you my current favorite, this year' successor to "Magic Stick" in the category of "kinda slow rap songs of which I actually prefer the radio versions due to super nasty lyrics," "Slow Motion" by Juvenile. A diamond among the other hip hop gems focused on the booty, "Slow Motion" is my newest ringtone.

In recent social event news. . .on Thursday Angie invited me to attend an event that held much Whiskey Tango promise: a charity softball game at Silver Cross Stadium featuring radio/local news personalities and NASCAR drivers. As I've never attended a NASCAR event, this sounded like a plan. The game was pretty fabulous. The stadium smelled. . .different than usual, and Angie informed that it was the smell of NASCAR. We saw many fabulous t-shirts, though unfortunately we didn't catch any of those being shot out of the T-shirt cannons (RIP Maude Flanders). We did enjoy another exciting free item: stuffed animals of the little yellow "AOL" man. I also got my picture taken with a life-sized AOL man, currently the wallpaper on my phone. However, the highlight of this event was definitely the "Zooperstars." The "Zooperstars" are people in inflatable animal costumes that have "clever" names that are parodies of athletes (i.e. my personal favorite, Nomar Garciaparrot). At our game we were treated to Jeff Gordog and Roger Clamens. Unfortunately they don't have individual pictures. Jeff was amusing mostly because he couldn't seem to get his head under control, but Roger Clamens was classic. Basically Roger "ate" a guy who was out on the field, then the guy escaped out of Roger's mouth wearing only boxers. It was just as inappropriate as it sounds, and Angie, I hope your aunt's pictures turned out well because I want to see them.

After the game was Heroes as usual. It was an entertaining night, though I was very sad that Eddie Z did not have "Slow Motion." Get in gear, Eddie! Among the oddities was seeing a man go into the women's bathroom stall with a woman while the bathroom was filled with people, seeing another guy falling asleep against a tree outside Heroes, and talking to a girl in line for the bathroom, who when informed of what years Nancy and I graduated JCA, said, "Oh, you're older." And it starts. . . (Note: this girl was only 2 or 3 years younger than us). After Heroes I had the treat of watching a cartoon show I'd never seen before: "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." I'm going to have to start TIVOing this one.

Friday I headed to Fox Valley with Courtney and her mom during the day for some shopping, then picked up my college roommate Julie from the train station for her first weekend of fun in Joliet. Though Julie had been to Joliet briefly before for parties, she had never had a full weekend of J-town fun. Friday night we went to Cemeno's (Note: Their Venetian Bread is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up), then braved the downpour to go to Samy's. It was a fairly uneventful night at Samy's that featured an unknown, but pretty bad band in which the drummer was often the lead singer, and the guitar player danced through the crowd. Later on we were outside and the band was packing up. A guy sitting at the bar yelled out, "You guys sucked!" He then asked me if they did indeed suck. Apparently he hadn't been there when they were playing and just made an assumption. His assumption was correct and did NOT make an ass out of you and me. Since Samy's was not too exciting, we went over to Heroes for a while for a continued lack of excitement. Apparently the rain led to a lack of patrons, I thought the Nascar folks would be out in droves, but I guess not.

Saturday we went to the mall for a bit and then went to Haunted Trails for some golf. In my second trip to Haunted Trails this summer, I had yet another odd encounter with adolescent boys. This time it involved the golfers behind us, a blond boy and his "Seth Cohen from the O.C. gone bad" companion. They looked to be about 15, and seemed to be "course hopping," bouncing back and forth from "sporty course" to "spooky course." At one point one of them hit their ball over the fence into the road, at which the kid scaled the fence, ran across the street, and retrieved the ball. Later on they attempted to golf with what looked like skee-balls, switched Julie's ball with a skee-ball, and informed us that we were currently being pranked on "MTV's Boiling Points." Very odd stuff. We went over to Coach's Corner for some ice cream, considered heading over to St. Joe's for their polka fest, then decided to head home after seeing that they were charging admission. I ain't payin' for polka.

Saturday evening a bunch of us went to go see Anchorman. We decided to check out Hollywood Boulevard Theater in Woodridge. This theater allows you to drink and eat during the movies, they have a full menu and cocktail waiters and waitreses running around the theater. It wasn't much more expensive than the usual Ghetto 8/Movies 10, and we highly enjoyed our Bubba Gump cheese filled shrimp and popcorn with real butter (they also had great pina coladas), but I think that having waiters and waitresses running around kind of distracted from the movie. It was fun for once in a while though. Anchorman was fabulous. I have to see it again to decide if it was better than Dodgeball, but it was definitely awesome. Will Ferrell can do no wrong, and neither can Vince Vaughn (except for The Lost World). I'll go with 3 1/2 stars.

Sunday I watched TV during the day and started watching Bad Santa (not loving it yet, but there's still time), then met Megan, Nance and Aaron at St. Joe's. The picnic was not too exciting and I wasn't hungry enough for a smokie, but people watching was still entertaining. Afterward we went to Melrose where I had an awesome chocolate malt (I got my hunger back). However, warning to potential Melrose customers: I had fries with a ranch dressing, and I found (gasp!) a hair in the dressing. When I told the waitress, she said, "That's quality," and came back with a new bowl of ranch that she informed me that she got right from the container this time. This made us question where the original ranch came from. I don't want to think about it too much.

That's all I got for now. More news later!!!