New Zealand Fun Bucks

When I went to Ireland a few years ago, I ordered Euro from my bank about 3 weeks in advance. I needed to have some (obviously) when I was over there and I wasn't about to pay the exorbitant exchange rates at the airport to do it. Of course, I sort of blew through what little cash I brought with me about 2/3rds of the way through the trip and ended up having to make an ATM withdrawal that cost me eleventy bajillion dollars in service fees. Oh, and the Euro that I ordered from my bank took just over two weeks to get to me. Who knew?

So, in preparation for next month's trip, I decided to order my money a month in advance. "Hell," I thought "New Zealand is twice as far away as Ireland is... It'll take twice as long for the money to get here." Yes, I really am 30 years old, and yes, this is really how I think. I ordered my currency yesterday and I got a phone call this morning saying that it was in. Now THAT'S service! Way to go, SunTrust Bank!

I got the same teller (Erin) that I got yesterday and as she was filling out my currency form, she stopped and the following conversation between Erin, Mary (another teller) and me occurred:

Erin: "Hey, Mary... What is the currency of New Zealand called?"

Mary: "Oh, gosh... I forget."

Erin: "Craaaaaap."
Me (interjecting): "They're called 'dollars'."

Erin (looking up from the stack of notes that read 'New Zealand' and 'Dollars' on them): "That's not right, is it?"

Me: "Trust me. It's right."

Erin: "Mary... Can you look up the New Zealand currency name for me?"

Me: "Seriously. They're called dollars."

Erin: "Really?"

Me: "Yeah. Or if you want to write 'New Zealand Fun Bucks' on your form that's cool with me."

Steven Slater

Steven Slater. Sounds like he could be the brother of semi-masculine A.C. Slater from Saved by the Bell. But he's not. If you've been paying attention to the news the past few days, you've undoubtedly heard of the JetBlue flight attendant / steward / whateverthey'recalled and his amazing grab a beer and run out the airplane quit. That's the best saying that I could come up with for it? Ah, crap.

I've followed this story with a decent amount of interest the past few days and I have to say that I disagree with Steven Slater. 99%.

First of all, I have to say that we've all dreamed of quitting a job like that. Grabbing a beer, swearing at everybody, and then exiting out the emergency slide. What? Your place of business doesn't have an emergency slide? That part is pretty awesome and that's where the 1% of agreement comes from.

Here's why I disagree with him 99%, though.

Dude... SS... Your job is hospitality. You are paid to be nice to people. You are paid to give out Pepsi and pretzels and according to salary.com, you get paid about $38,000 a year to do it. Do you know that I work 60 hours a week at three jobs and don't make much more than that? Someone has to get paid to do it and that someone isn't me. Do you know why? Because I am not very nice. Even if someone paid me to be nice, I probably wouldn't last very long. Certainly not long enough to do it for as many years as you did. I'd last maybe a flight. Maybe. And that's only if I had access to the beverage cart.

Everywhere I read about online keeps talking about how great this guy is. I just don't see it. All he managed to do was a live reenactment of that scene from Half Baked where Scareface quits his job. That's pretty funny and all, I suppose, but if I wanna watch Half Baked, I'm gonna watch Half Baked. And there's no way that Steven Slater is half as funny as Dave Chappelle. Hell, he's not even half as funny as Jim Breuer, who I'm pretty sure is a highly functional autistic.

But the real reason why I have no sympathy for Steven Slater? It's because he works for an airline. I don't care that you don't like it when people get on their cell phones when the plane lands. I don't care that you don't like it when people jump up to get their bags from the overhead compartment. Let 'em. That's right. Let 'em pull out their phones. Let 'em get their luggage from the overhead bin. What do you care if they get ear cancer or get knocked unconscious by their Samsonite bag? That'd teach them a thing or two. It's an airline. The enemy.

In my life, I've been on 20 individual flights. Do you know how many delays and or cancelled flights I've endured? 6. That's 30% of the flights that I've taken that have been wrong. Do you know what would happen if I got, say, company payroll right only 70% of the time? That's right, I'd be looking for work, just like Steven Slater. And air hosts and air hostesses wonder why travelers are pissed off.

Don't support this guy. He's not a hero. He's not a chump. He's just some dude.

Piranha 3D

Have you guys seen this Mad Men show? Judging by the fact that no single episode has ever had more than 1 million viewers and that it's on basic cable, I'm going to say that you probably haven't. It seems to be semi-wildly popular with people my age-ish but I don't really know because I don't really watch TV 'cept for sports and when LOST was on. Anyway, let me give you a very academic breakdown of what I believe the last 3 seasons and change have yielded based on me seeing two and a half episodes and from what Patrick Copeland has told me:

Some dude named Dick or Don [MYSTERY!] went to war, stole his dead buddy's identity, went to New York, worked at a wildly successful advertising agency, quit, started his own (so-far) floundering advertising agency, has hooked up with every special guest star actress, all while within arm's reach of a bottle of Speyside or Glenlivet depending on his mood. There. I just saved you one hundred F-bomb and topless-less hours because the show is on basic cable. This sounds strangely similar to The Prince and the Pauper and (perhaps more culturally important) the episode of The Simpsons when the town finds out that Principal Seymour Skinner is really named Armin Tanzarian. What? You've seen it.

All in all, though, Mad Men is not a bad show. Especially during the last commercial break of this Sunday's episode. WHAAAAAAT?!

That's right folks. After an evening at Rumours East (go Mint Juleps, go!) I went over to the Burleson house (along with the McCopelands) to watch this week's episode. And, during the last commercial break of the evening, I saw the preview for what is sure to be the blockbuster film of the summer. Yes, that includes Inception which could have been better only if the studio execs could have figured out a way to cross over the film with an episode of Pimp My Ride. Imagine the revenue! Is that still a show? Bah. No matter. Oh, and making the Christopher Nolan mindbender about 4 seconds longer just so that I could prove to everyone that my theory on the ending is right.

Now, as you all know, I love movies. Generally, the worse or better the movie is, the more I'll like it. It's sort of a reverse bell curve with me. That's education, homies. Some films in my stable include MEGASNAKE, Teenage Caveman and the special edition dvd of Snakes on a Plane just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. Ladies and gentlemen... I present you with what is guaranteed to be the single best film you will see this year. More visually stunning than Giant Athletic Smurfs with Helicopters and Slingshots Avatar. More mindbending than the aforementioned Xzibit-free Inception. Folks... Prepare yourselves:

What a brilliant an original concept for a film! Vicious attacking fish with awesome teeth prey upon really good looking people at the beach in 3D. Wait... what? You say it's already been made? You say it starred Dennis Quaid? YOU SAY IT'S NOT ORIGINAL? Damnit, Jaws 3D. You are ruining my life (and my argument) right now. I don't care. I'm still going to go see it.

I can see this becomming huge. Huge enough for the Discovery channel to give Piranha their own week on that station. I'm actually still wondering why they don't have Puppy Week. Or Kitten Week. Or Fried Chicken Week. I guess that's why I'm not in television production. Well, that and my Xzibit-DiCaprio crossover idea. And that I live in Nashville. And don't know anything about television production.

Folks, next Friday it is. Rush to your local cineplex. Buy your tickets early online at Fandango*. Camp out. Steal your grandma's VCR and pawn it. Do whatever it is you have to do to see this movie.



*Fandango: I expect a portion of the proceeds for the tickets you sell. You're welcome.

This ain't no Vietnam

I walked out the door of Jackson's in Hillsboro Village last night and had the following conversation.
- Homeless guy: "Can you spare some change for a homeless vet?"
- Me: "What war were you in?"
- Homeless guy: "Uh... I was in.. uhh..."
- Me: "Nope."

Storm the F%$@ing Kastle

This DiamondSnake band is horrible.

And it has Moby in it.

Pedal boards: Life in the awesome

If I were any sort of normal person, I would be asleep right now. However, since we all know that I’m really not, I am sitting in my room watching Super Troopers for the second time tonight. Actually, that’s a half-truth. I am sitting in my room unsuccessfully trying to steal internet access from my neighbors who think that setting up a Comcast account was (or is, rather) an excellent idea. As a result of their recent foray into the world of hell Comcast, using their internet signal is increasingly difficult as I can’t seem to get around the Comcast firewall login page thingy. I’m very good with these sorts of technical terms.

So, in my frustration to read about which In N Out Burger is the closest to LAX as I will be in that area in a mere two months and change and everyone keeps telling me “Oh, you have to go to In N Out Burger!” since I’ve never been… I decided to check out twitter [Follow me: @peanutisawesome] one last time for the evening on my iPhone (translation: I’m better than you because I have an awesome phone) before falling asleep with my television on for the seventh night out of the last eight. Birthday night doesn’t count. I don’t remember it. Someone told me today that I poked myself in the eyeball inadvertently with a straw on multiple attempts to drink water. Either I had a really good time or I’ve turned into Superman. Hell, it might even be both. Anyway… back to twitter.

My friend Nick [Follow him: @nickbaumhardt] has successfully parlayed his ability to play and record music into a career. He’s played with such bands as The Class of 98 and Thousand Foot Krutch… Currently, he’s recording and producing and playing for some lady that until recent Googling (you call it “stalking”, I call it “researching”), I had never heard of. Suffice it to say, the dude can play. Also, most of you who know me know that I may be the very worst guitar player in Nashville to trick people into thinking that I can actually play guitar. Seriously, if you just learn how to throw your guitar, stand on a bass drum from time to time, and get into the occasional scuffle before a show, people in this town will respect your on-stage abilities, as non-existent as they may be. As a couple of added bonuses, they will also come to respect your ability to use the hyphen and apparently chicks will dig you more… or so I’m told about the last part.

Nick also writes a blog that he updates on a relatively regular basis that gets a good amount of web traffic. He doesn’t have to rely on funny stories of adventures gone wrong to get people to go to his site because he’s actually making a go of it in the real world and offers advice and insight on the musical world, whereas I just write about how Justin Beiber sucks and how Kelly Clarkson comes into A Village of Flowers on a relatively regular basis these days. We think she’s stalking real-life Googling one of the designers. Wait a second… Strikethrough? Link to a website? Recalling two earlier jokes from the same blog entry? Hot damn! That’s talent! But back to it…

In Nick’s latest blog entry, he writes at length about pedal boards. You know those little metal and plastic boxes that guitar players kick with their feet (What the hell else are they gonna kick it with? Their ass?) that change the sound of their guitar… Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s a good read. But, since he called me out personally in his entry (it’s near the end, trust me) asking for a response, I figured I better do it. And since I’m still wide awake and watching the “Car RamRod” scene was funny the first time and much less so the second, I figured I better own up to it.

In my years of pissing people off (let’s face it, it’s kind of a hobby of mine), when I built my first and only pedal board some four and a half years ago, I decided to have a little fun with it. Sure, I have rubber feet on it, and handles, and carpet… but I bet I’m the only person in Nashville that can play with Matchbox cars next to his tuning pedal while navigating a cityscape. You know, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I don’t have a record deal.

I don’t know what Nick will have to say about the psychology of my pedal board but it will probably be met with some sort shocked look and then an, “Oh, man!” I get that a lot here in Nashville.

I have however managed to make my guitars sound like the end of the world. I just turn everything up really loudly and play. If anyone wants that on an upcoming record, let me know. I’ve got the time… as long as it doesn’t interfere with what has become an apparent obsession with Super Troopers.

Worlds Apart

I went to an all-ages, all-locals show at Rocketown a few days ago. It's the first all-ages, all-locals show that I've been to in close to three years. The first show with a bunch of local scene bands that I've been to in a long time. And why? Well for two reasons:
#1.) Two of my roommates (I'll let you guess which two) are in the band Worker, they are awesome dudes, and I wanted to see them play.
#2.) I don't really care about the scene.

Recently, I read a blog from a local here in Nashville about how the hardcore scene was dead (or at the least, dying). Immediately, upon finishing reading it, I realized how little I cared. Maybe it's age, maybe it's the fact that music styles change as quickly as the seasons (especially in Nashville), maybe it's because there will always be an underground music scene. Whatever the reason is, I've scene seen enough scenes, played enough shows, sold enough merch, and been bounced around enough vans to know that they're pretty much all the same. Nashville, Williamsburg, Austin, Portland, Louisville. Hell, when people ask me if I know "so-and-so from Atlanta... hardcore dude, plugs in his ears, tattoos, hangs out with the whateverbandfromAtlantaishotatthemoment all the time" I usually say "no". Because I don't. And because it doesn't matter if I do or not. And all this coming from someone who used to go to most every show at the Local during my more formative years [side note: how The Swellers and Chiodos became huge out of that place, I will never know, as the only thing I seem to recall about those bands is walking outside and giving my ears a rest when they played because they were so awful].

The point is that I'm getting too old to care about shows. I go to the shows that I want to go to and see the bands that I want to see. And any 18 year old that thinks he has earned the right to tell me or you or anyone else that they have to support the scene needs a quick kick to the crotch.

Listen to the music that you want to listen to. Make the music that you want to make. Who cares if it's popular? Who cares if you're playing to 400 kids or to a bartender and your girlfriends? Who cares if you're into the latest Haste the Day (they're still around, right?) record or not?

I think, though, that the dudes in ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead put it best (caution: Song is NSFW):



I'm stepping off my soapbox for now on this one.