I'm thinking "give me an IPod!"

I submitted my "I'm thinking Arby's" costume from 2 years ago to an online costume contest. It doesn't look like there's online voting or anything, but maybe I'll win an IPod or something. (Maybe if you go to the link and add comments like, "That costume is SO COOL" it will help my chances?) Still no idea what, if anything, I'll be this year. The website has some pretty cool costume ideas, but not sure my fabric/sewing/welding skills are on par with the creators'.

Call of the game

I just finished watching game 3 of the World Series. I don't really care who wins betwen the Rays and the Phillies, I just like watching baseball. This one was a pretty decent game, all things considered. 45-yr-old Jamie Moyer vs. former Twin Matt Garza, back-to-back dingers from Utley and Howard, plenty of baserunning shenanigans, and a bases-loaded infield single to end the game in the bottom of the 9th. I was entertained. O yeah, and there was also the head-scratching quote from Tim McCarver- one of my least favorite baseball announcers.

In the bottom of the 9th the Rays plunked the first Phillies batter and that sent Joe Buck and Tim McCarver into a tizzy over various pitching, hitting, bunting and fielding strategies. Then Grant Balfour threw a wild pitch which careened off the backstop and back to the catcher, who fired it into the outfield trying to get the runner. On that sequence the runner went all the way from first to third, and we got Tim McCarver's take:

"The best-laid plans of mice and men! (pause) And managers!"

What?!

Is that a giant pink monkey on top of a car in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

I rarely take pictures with my cellphone. Or, more accurately, I rarely take pictures with my cellphone on purpose. The little camera button is on the side of my cellphone and is inadvertently pushed whenever I lean against something or fish for loose change or walk or sit down. I have roughly a thousand cellphone pictures of the inside of my pocket.

Anyway, I found need for it the other day when I came across this in the parking garage:

Giant pink monkey. It was on the hood of that car for a couple days, but now it's gone.

Less cushion for the sumo pushin'

In Japan, if there is a big upset at a sumo event, the fans pick up and fling their seat cushions. This didn't happen at the sumo event I attended in 2004, but I saw video of it a few times when I was over there and it looks pretty cool. Essentially it's the sumo equivalent of throwing hats on the ice at a hockey game after a player scores a hat trick, or throwing hot dogs at Chuck Knoblauch or the Chicago WhiteSox during dollar dog night at the Dome.

So I was saddened to read this article about how the Japan Sumo Association is putting a stop to cushion throwing. I liked the idea of starting a little pillow fight after watching two behemoths slam, push, choke, gouge, and throw each other around. The world really is going to Hell when Japan does stuff to be less fun.

i choose not greatness

Every year at work we have a "Journey to Greatness" meeting where the President of the company talks to us about what a great year we're having and what's on the horizon for the upcoming year. They put together a video or two of people in the company answering phones and smiling and pointing at computer screens and smiling. They do a pretty good job of putting together something pretty corny.

Last year the theme was "Agent (2)007." Kinda James Bond-ish where we focused on the importance of insurance agents and they put together a video of the higher-ups running around in tuxedos on top secret missions.

This year the theme was based on the Presidential election. The President of the company entered to "Hail to the Chief" and, throwing up the double peace sign, proclaimed, "I am not a crook!" The video had lots of employees smiling and then cut to scenes and sound bites of former U.S. Presidents like Kennedy, Eisenhower, Ford... and also Martin Luther King Jr. for some reason.

We were all given campaign buttons that say "i choose greatness" on them. One of my coworkers was really annoyed that the "i" is not capitalized.

For the past three months, along with other projects, I've been working on putting together materials for an upcoming class of new hire trainees. They are scheduled to start training in about a week, so we're pretty close to having all the training materials finally done. Or so I thought. Today I was given information that sabotages a lot of the work that I had been putting together. Much of what has taken three months to work on now needs to be scrapped and hastily redone in one week.

Anyway, this is how I cope with stress at work:

A place we saw the lights turn low, the jig-saw jazz and the get-fresh flow

I saw Beck in concert last night and had a pretty good time. Beck is awesome. I can't say I'm a fan of Roy Wilkins though. The view from the balcony seating was fine but the acoustics were hit or miss at times. To be fair, it's probably easier for Beck to play there than for other artists. It's a challenge to understand all of Beck's lyrics anyway, and with his crazy techno-tronic beats and screeching guitar it's sometimes hard to tell if it was a bad venue or "normal" Beck.

The last time I saw Beck was in 2002 when he played a solo acoustic show at the Fitzgerald. That was one of the best concerts I've ever seen and seeing this Beck concert made me like that one even more. I knew these would be two completely different experiences. This one was a rock concert, that one was (as the ticket stub said) "An evening with Beck," and was a heavy dose of Mutations and Sea Change.

Going in to this concert I was looking forward to hearing some Odelay and some of Becks hits that came out between 2002 and now. The show itself seemed to go by really quickly, even though he played 25 songs: Loser, Nausea, Girl, Timebomb, Minus, Soul of a Man, Chemtrails, Mixed Bizness, Nicotine & Gravy, Que Onda Guero, Hell Yes, Clap Hands, Black Tambourine, Devil's Haircut, Orphans, Think I'm in Love, Walls, Missing, the Golden Age, Lost Cause, Where It's At, Gamma Ray, Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat (Dylan cover), Profanity Prayers, E-Pro.

Here are my thoughts, and most of them are going to compare the show to the one I caught 6 years ago. Opening with Loser was pretty awesome (I suspected he'd open with Orphans from his new CD). In the middle of the 2002 show he played the opening riff from Loser and then said "wouldn't it be weird if I came to town and didn't play my bigget hit?"... and then he went on to play something else. I thought it was actually pretty funny, but had high hopes to hear "Loser" tonight, and it was nice to get it right away.

Heavy on the Guero. I expected him to play a bunch from his new CD but didn't know how Beck would tie-in all his other work. I was okay with him relying heavily on Guero as I really like E-Pro, Hell Yes, Black Tambourine and Girl. Beck and company busted out a bunch of headsets and started playing the silly noises of Hell Yes and I got really excited to see this live, but it ended up failing. Beck's headset didn't really work and we were left hearing a few beeps and boops and then "Hell Yes!" without getting any of the lyrics. They got halfway through the next song (Clap Hands) before giving Beck a mic that worked. It was a pity this didn't work better because when he busted out a little toy keyboard noisemaker thing in 2002 it was pretty entertaining.

Black Tambourine was one of the highlights of the night. I like the song but what made this was some dude they brought up on stage, dubbed as "the best tambourine player in Minnesota." I don't know if he won a contest or something, but he took full advantage of being on stage with Beck and a tambourine. Wearing a blue jumpsuit, this guy danced around, did rockstar jump kicks, and "dribbled" the tambourine between his legs like a basketball player.

Other than tambourine man, I thought the best series of songs was The Golden Age, Lost Cause, and Where It's At. Beck was ripping through the songs pretty quickly and it was nice to slow down for a second and hear a couple from Sea Change. Every one of Beck's albums has a different feel to it (He pulled songs from 7 or 8 different albums), but the two songs he played from Sea Change really stood out from the rest. You can still feel more emotion in that album than in any other Beck works, which are lyrically awesome, but a lot of times is Beck just F***in' around. I think, due in part to the 2002 concert, that if I had to pick one CD as my favorite I'd pick Sea Change. Though I wish he played Lonesome Tears and Guess I'm Doin' Fine (maybe my most favorite Beck song of them all) instead. And then... BAM! Where It's At! Possibly the funnest song in Beck's arsenal, and coming off the two slower, mellower songs, it was the rock song that rocked the most.

Beck played 6 somgs off of his latest album, Modern Guilt (Orphans, Gamma Ray, Chemtrails, Walls, Soul of a Man, Profanity Prayers). I expected a lot off of Modern Guilt. I like Orphans and Walls, Gamma Ray is fun but nothing too special for Beck. I was surprised that he didn't play the title track Modern Guilt, and a little disappointed that he didn't play Youthless, which I think is the best track on album.

It was good to hear some Nicotine & Gravy in the mix, and I thought E-Pro was a quality closing song, though I think the crowd would've interacted more with Debra as a finale. Speaking of which, Beck really didn't talk much with the crowd. It was pretty much song, song, song, song, one right after the other. This isn't terrible, because I've been to concerts that are the complete opposite. Beastie Boys kept going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yo, yo, what's up? what's up?" for SO LONG between every song. They really killed the momentum of the show and I kept screaming "Just play a song!" Beck played one cover, Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat by Bob Dylan. In 2002 he did Raspberry Beret by Prince, so he was sticking with the Minnesota thing. I liked the Price cover better, and again, much better crowd interaction.

I wish he played longer, but 25 songs is a good setlist. I was happy to hear more songs live, as only 2 songs from the 25 were played at the 2002 set. Overall, a pretty entertaining show.