A celebration
Today Marie & I attended the funeral of Chuck Audy. I still can’t believe that he is gone. It feels weird to say this but Chuck’s funeral was hands down the best funeral I’ve ever been to. It was a celebration and a feast, just the way he would have wanted it. Marc gave a beautiful 20+ minute reflection on his dad to a packed church. I was in awe. I can’t even explain how proud I am of Marc and his sister.
Their mother Sue is doing better. She had surgery yesterday and what was supposed to be an 8 hour ordeal ended up only taking 3 hours. Unfortunately she was in no shape to attend the funeral. It was videotaped so when the time comes, hopefully watching the video will be able to give her closure. Marc and Kelly were going to the hospital tonight after the services to see their mother and explain to her what happened. I can’t even imagine how hard that is going to be. Sue’s a strong woman tho and with the love and support of her children and family, she will pull thru.
My love and prayers go out to you and your family Marc. God bless.
V for Victory
A co-worker of mine sent me this great link to a pretty hilarious review of V the mini-series. I was a HUGE fan of V when it first aired back in the 80’s. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Diane eat that guinea pig. That scared the shit outta me! If your a fan of sci-fi and can put aside the cheesy visual effects, I highly recommend checking it out. Horror fans will recognize Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame playing the character Willy.
Voodoo smile, siamese twins
This past weekend I spent a majority of my Saturday trimming trees and actually cutting down 3 pretty big ones. It was a little nerve-racking as two of these tree’s were VERY close to the house. Luckily we got them cut up and safely on the ground with no damage to the house. If it wasn’t for Marie’s dad, I’d have to invest thousands of dollars in tools and labor getting alot of the work around my house done. Unfortunately we’ve only put a small dent in the trimming that needs to be done. There are also five more tree’s that need to come down.
Saturday night Marie & I went up to the cottage for the first time in two weeks. We spent the night and left on Sunday around 9pm. I haven’t had much luck fishing lately but my luck changed on Saturday. I caught a 17″ large mouth bass - and what a riot that was! It put up a pretty good fight and was really pushing my pole to the max. Good thing I put a 10 pound line on that pole a couple of weeks ago or that fish would have broke the line for sure!
Last week Wednesday was the Interpol/Cure show. The weather was raining on and off all the way there but managed to turn out pretty nice once we got to DTE. By luck we found a Steakhouse at the exit before DTE and had a really good meal before the show. The French dressing on my salad was kick ass. Gotta find that recipe. Interpol was pretty good live. I swear the lead singer looks like Crispin Glover. The Cure completely blew my mind again. They started out the show with Plainsong and then Shake Dog Shake right after that. They played a ton of songs from Head on the Door like Push, Sinking and Close to me. They also played 3 songs from Pornography: One Hundred Years, Siamese Twins (I about died) and A Strange Day! I couldn’t believe it. The only played 3 songs from the new album and they sounded much better live than on the album (I didn’t really care for the new album much). They ended the night with Boys Don’t Cry. I thought for sure it would be A Forest but I think the show might have been cut short. My friends Eric and Sue have been listening to the Cure as long as I have and this was their first time seeing them. They were just amazed. It was cool to actually see there reactions when each song started. Bob and company still have it…
Mold is bad for you
One of the exciting things about the arcade collecting hobby is when you uncover a warehouse full of hundreds of arcade games that haven’t seen an arcade since the eighties. This past Sunday I made my last visit to a warehouse that a friend of mine turned me on to a year go. I was fortunate enough to get some rare games out of there, including an Atari Quantum and a Quadrapong. Amazingly enough most of the games we pulled out of there were in pretty good condition, considering the place was in horrible shape. The ceiling was caving in in multiple spots and the floor was soo bad in some area’s that you couldn’t even walk on it without fear of falling thru. Various animals had made homes out of some of the games over the years too. One visit we found a dead racoon in one of the rooms and on the next visit all that was left of the racoon was a bunch of fur. Yummy.
This last visit we spent about 6 hours pulling out parts from cabinets that were not worth saving. I managed to get some good boards like Super Pacman, Frogger, Battlezone, some SI boards and 3 complete sets of boards for Solar Quest. I also took home a Space Invaders, Asteroids and two Solar Quests cabs. Most of the cabs were so damp and full of mildew that the back doors would crumble just by pulling on them. The smell from all the mold was enough to make you sick. When the cabs were that horrible I didn’t feel that bad gutting them for parts.
It’s a shame we are not going back again as there is still some stuff worth saving. The owner is nervous that someone is going to get hurt as the place is in such bad shape. Apparently the building is going to be bulldozed down sometime soon. The good news is that many of the games in this warehouse went to fellow collectors in and around Michigan. It would have been a damn shame if the place was bulldozed with all those games inside. Hundreds of classics would have been lost.
Tommorrow is the Cure/Interpol/Mogwai/Rapture show at DTE. We are taking off around 1pm as the show starts at 5pm. I’m really excited to see Interpol for the first time. They have a new album coming out shortly so I’m sure they will be playing from tracks from that. Hopefully the Cure will play more of their old stuff as the last couple albums have not been that great (Bloodflowers was ok, the latest album gets on my nerves).
I just finished watching Jaws 4. I completely forgot that Lance Guest (of The Last Starfighter fame) was in this. Mario Van Peebles with that rasta man accent was a little hard to swallow. Overall not that great of a movie but it does have a couple cool scenes of the Shark taking a bite out of some unexpecting victims.
Row, row, row your boat
Went to a sneak peek of Collateral at Studio 28 tonight with Ryan, Daintry, Eric and Don. Overall not a bad film but I was glad I didn’t have to pay to see it. I watched Anchorman the other day and that had me rolling. Good stuff. Aaron let me borrow the Bourne Identity and I just didn’t think it was all that great. So many people rave about this movie but I just don’t get it. But then again, I’m the only straight guy I know that likes Greg Araki movies so what the hell do I know. Speaking of which, I still need to find a copy of Totally Fucked Up as I have yet to see it.
I managed to get a copy of Doom 3 that is coming out next week. I plan on installing it on my laptop since it is the fastest computer I have. I know I’m gonna have to really skimp on the various game details as the requirements for this game are insane. Aaron and I are going to get it up and running on the new lab computers at work sometime this week and get a LAN game going. That will really test the power of these new machines.
Last weekend we bought a brand new Paddle Cruiser for Marie’s parents from Harrisons in Wayland. Dennis referred us to him and managed to get us $100 off the price. Marie & I rented a trailer and picked it up last week Saturday and brought it to the cottage to surprise her parents. They were quite shocked to say the least. It’s alot of fun on the lake and makes an EXCELLENT fishing boat! Unfortunately Marie’s parents rented out the cottage for the week starting last week Sunday so we won’t be able to go up there until next weekend. I’m sure the people renting the cottage are having alot of fun with it tho.
The Cure, Interpol, Mogwai and the Rapture are next week Wednesday. All together there are 10 of us going to the show. I haven’t seen the Cure since 1996 so I’m really looking forward to this show. The last couple Cure albums haven’t been that good (especially this latest one) but they always play there old stuff and even the songs you don’t like sound better live. As long as they don’t play Mint Car I’ll be fine.
I read a recent article about the Cure in a UK magazine that quoted Robert Smith saying he took acid every single day they were recording the album Pornography, which happens to be one of my favorite albums. Perhaps Robert should start taking drugs again…