These radio commercials have to the most brilliant ads on the planet. I heard this one on the drive home today and laughed out loud. Enjoy.
Bud Light - Real Men Of Genius: Mr. Oxygen Bar Inventor
26 11 2008Comments : No Comments »
Tags : bud light
Categories : Entertainment
Coachella
7 11 2008So my daughter’s been bugging me about this music event called Coachella. Apparently it’s some kind of “day on the Green” / “Woodstock” / “Us Festival” type event they hold in the So-Cal desert every year. It runs for three days, has over 100 bands playing from morning until midnight, art displays, camping… the whole deal… and she wants to go.
Now my first reaction was “I don’t want to go hang out with a bunch of damn hippies!”, and as soon as that thought entered my head I immediately shuddered in fright. It had happened! But when??? I didn’t even see it coming? When did I become an old fart? It’s just not fair! You’re supposed to get a warning before hand right? Maybe some gray hair and a stiff back to mark the road to cranky old timers-ville. And yet here I was, perfectly healthy (and quite handsome I might add), and yet refusing an epic rock show and road trip??? Blasphemy!!!!
So I told her we’d go…. with a catch. She’s got to pay her own way. This ain’t Woodstock. Today’s shows are organized and corporate sponsored, which means they are expensive. But if she’s up for it, I’m willing to go. In fact, I’m flattered that my teenage daughter would even want to hang with her old man. My dad and I never did anything together. So I’m really happy that me and my kid get to do this.
The only bummer is that we can’t camp out, and my daughter was really disappointed by that. She wants the “full Coachella experience” as she puts it. But you have to be 18 and have a valid id to camp. So we’ll have to settle for a motel room. Which isn’t bad, a shower will be nice, but it would have been kind of cool to just rough it together. Maybe in a few years we’ll do it again.
Anyway, Coachella here we come!
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Tags : Music
Categories : Entertainment, Life, Music
Interview With The Vampire
31 10 2008Last night I finished reading “Interview With The Vampire” by Anne Rice. I had picked it up along with her new book, “Called Out of Darkness”, which is about her re-commitment to Christianity after being an atheist for her entire adult life. I’m not really into the whole vampire genre of fiction, I’m a science fiction guy, but since it was her first blockbuster novel, I wanted to experience it before I dig into her conversion story.
So I gotta say, it was riveting and I plowed through 2/3rds of the book in two sittings. The Louis character was interesting. Sort of a lost soul, not unlike a lot of people, searching for meaning in life, fighting the constant battle between his inner urges and his morality. He also struggles with the existence of God , the concepts of good and evil, the search for love, and I wondered how much of this reflected Anne’s own struggles.
A lot of this book was creepy though. And by creepy I just mean that it made me feel uncomfortable to have my mind flooded with certain types of imagery. There’s a lot of death (obviously) in this book, but there’s also a lot of excitement and pleasure associated with that death, and that aspect turned me off. There’s quite a bit of homoerotic imagery toward the end as well, and for a second I thought I had opened an Oscar Wilde novel. Don’t get me wrong, none of the gore or sexual imagery felt sensationalistic or anything, it fit with the story, but it was all very primal and dark and unsettling.
Toward the end it all just became a little too much as I started to realize that there would be no redemption, no hero of the story. Nobody to right the wrongs and make me feel good about the future. The story just ended in kind of a numb, dark place for me. It seemed to say that life is basically meaningless and we should just do what pleases us at any given time and give up trying to make something more out of it. I closed the book feeling a little depressed.
So needless to say I won’t be reading the rest of the vampire series. On the upside though, I do like Rice’s writing style and I think it was her descriptions and emotion that kept my head buried in those pages. So I’m looking forward to reading some of her newer and hopefully more uplifting work.
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Tags : fiction
Categories : Entertainment
Anne Rice
21 10 2008Yesterday Aron posted a tweet (man I hate saying that!) about a new book by Anne Rice. For those of you that don’t know Anne Rice, she’s one of the best selling authors around, selling over 100 million fictional novels, most of which have been centered around the subjects of vampires and kinky sex.
What makes this new book interesting though is that Anne Rice is now a Christian, after 38 years of atheism. This new book details her life, how she turned away from Christ, and how He brought her back to him. Her story is truly amazing and inspiring. Rather than try to poorly recap the whole story here, I’ve provided some links to an interview with Dr. Dobson on the internet as well as a link to her book on Amazon. Check it out.
Dr. Dobson / Anne Rice interview, part 1
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Tags : Christianity
Categories : Entertainment, Religion
Las Vegas Bikefest 2008: Recap
6 10 2008Well, I’m home from Bikefest 2008! This year did not disappoint. It was probably the largest Bikefest ever and was a total blast. 1000 miles of riding, tens of thousands of bikes, dozens of bands, great cigars and micro-brews, and a few bucks tossed into the slots just for good measure, made for a great weekend.
We left early Thursday morning under perfect riding conditions and arrived in Vegas at around 2pm. We parked the bikes and headed to Hennesy’s pub for a cold one before heading to the Cashman center where the vendor village is. There were just boatloads of vendors there this year selling everything you could think of, and a bunch of stuff you didn’t know existed, for bikes and bikers.
Friday and Saturday were spent just doing what you do at a biker rally. Basically when you’re not riding your bike, you’re looking at bikes, shopping for bike stuff, or talking about bikes. There is other stuff going on of course. There’s bands playing on every corner, but being a biker rally, it seems they haven’t learned any new songs since 1977. A man can only take so much CCR. We did come across one band on the street in front of the Beauty Bar that was really cool though. They were a three piece Latin percussion group, but they were working in all kinds of non Latin rhythms, at one point even busting out some old school hip hop stuff. Very cool.
One thing I always like at these rallies as well is the Dome of Death which is basically a giant metal ball. Three guys on bikes get in it and ride around on the inside walls in all directions and somehow they manage to not smash into each other. It’s really amazing.
So Sunday we slept in a little and then rode the long ride home. Between almost getting smashed in the head by a fairly large bird, getting smacked right in the eye by a large flying insect of some sort, and getting the inside of my right arm sunburnt to a crisp because I missed it when I applied my sunscreen, we made it home.
All in all it was a great weekend, and I’ll definitely being doing it again next year. Check out the pictures by clicking the link on the right!
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Tags : Motorcycling, las vegas, bikefest
Categories : Entertainment, Life, Rides
