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I'm being a bit of a Negative Nancy today, but begrudge me this ok?
2002-01-25-3:02 p.m.
So it's Friday, and that rocks balls, because I'm all about the freedom of the weekend. Life is going really good right now, and I don't have a whole lot to complain about. So yesterday was pretty productive, I replaced the fuel pump on my green car, and I went over to Rodney's house to work on his old beetle. It was given to him for free, but suprisingly it's in great shape and the engine should run great when we're done. We pulled it out of the car and mounted it this engine stand I'd built a few years back, which allows you to run the engine while it's out of the car, work on it etc.. It's basically the back half of a vw bus transmission, welded to some angle iron, welded to a big stainless steel flatbed cart that I stole from the Sams parking lot. I put a shelf on the back for a battery and gas can, and wired up some gauges and an igniton switch. Anyway to make a long story short, we ended up taking the entire motor apart, down to the pistons and the block, only to find out that there really wasn't anything wrong with it. But I'll chock this one up to another learning experience. After getting cleaned up, we headed to The Fabulous Satellite Lounge in Houston to see a friends band play. The show didn't start until 10 and their band was the third to play, so I didn't actually catch them. The first band though made the whole deal worth it. I really don't know where to start. See, the lead singer was a tall guy with a ponytail, and a shaved head on the sides, sporting a blonde handlebar mustache. I swear I kept thinking of a burnout-Red Baron the entire time. The drummer was a heavy set fellow, also sporting a ponytail, with stitches all the way up his forearm. Apparently this was because he was in the middle of a dogfight of some sort. I know this because the lead singer asked us to "put our hands together" for Glen (the drummer), because he was "injured in a dogfight but still came out to rock his ass off for you guys." So out of the 15 people in this club on a Thursday night, and the 4 who were actually paying attention to the show, 2 said "whoo" and clapped, and I think one guy did the devil/rock hand raise salute. It is also worthy of mention that this band's name was "kung fu gryp" (sic). I knew this because the guitar players amp rack had a giant highlight marker pot leaf drawn on the front and the words "kung fu gryp" written under it. They also had the name spelled out on a lightbrite at the front of the stage and for some reason a giant "avoid the Noid" plush toy next to it. Before I go any further, please note that historically I have only heaped tons of praise upon every band I have mentioned in this diary, and that the music that these guys played was soooooooooooooooooooo bad, that I really have no choice here. This lead singer guy had a voice like a 12 year old boy, which did not fit his body or his cool bad-guy-in-a-western mustache. He also played guitar, 2 chords, over and over, while randomly just stomping on a wah pedal. The bass player apparently just randomly slapped the heavy two strings as fast as he could the whole time, because by the end of the show it slowed considerably. The other guitar player was tuned in this half surf style/half mexican guitar flavor area that apparently necessitated the repeated and constant manipulation of an effects pedal, and an amp rack that was at least twice as loud as the rest of the bands instruments. The worst part of it is, the entire band was playing at once. There were changes in tempo, and even "solos", although there wasn't a single second when any of them stopped playing their instrument long enough to let the ear focus on another instrument for even a brief moment. The singer alternated every verse or line from a really deap growling Slayer sounding style, to a whiny, high pitched Faith No More meets Judas Priest whiny wail. Ladies and Gentlemen, this was just bad music. I mean, I guess every band in the world can't be great, and by definition some bands have to be the worst, but why I had to stumble into a 45 minute onslaught of this crap is beyond me. I mean SOMEBODY had to have told them how bad they were sometime. I'm all for being constructive and supportive, but much like a midget trying to play for the Lakers, it's just not meant to be. The second band was pretty good though, and emo/groove sorta thing, but I had to head out half way through their set. Oh well, it was only 5 dollar cover anyway. After that I went over to Sarah's to crash, got 4 hours sleep, and have actually had enough interesting work to do today to keep me busy and entertained and awake. As soon as I leave here today, I'm going to Rodney's so we can finish putting that engine back together and back in the car because tomorrow he's adding a larger/more efficient turbocharger to his New Beetle, and if it doesn't go smoothly he'll need to old bug to drive until it's finished. I'm realizing that when I talk about cars, no one has a clue what the fuck I'm talking about, but I get excited so thats ok. ;-P Buh.
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