Seeing Blink 182

I won some tickets on Friday to go see Blink 182 when they were in town, and holy shazbot, was that ever a good show. I'll show you two of the only pictures I took of the night, but this shit actually happened.




That is Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker being hoisted above the crowd on a mechanical stage. It tipped forward as well at a 45 degree angle, so he was strapped in there fairly well.

It was an awesome show! If you've seen Blink 182 in interviews or their music videos, they looks like guys who geniunely have fun performing, and you can by their live show that these boys like what they do. Between every song they'd do some pretty juvenile banter like:

"I heard that 80% of males in Saskatoon like to have a finger up their butt. I wiki'd that shit. - Tom Delonge"

Yes, that is an actual quote from the concert, and yes, I giggled like a little boy who just heard a fart joke.

In addition to seeing Blink, Against Me! and Rancid opened for them. Against Me was awesome! I had the distinct feeling that only %20 of the audience knew who they were, and I didn't even know they were opening for them so that was a wicked surprise!

But then there was Rancid. Honestly, I've never heard of the guys. Apparently they were pretty big in the 90s, I recognized only one song they played. They super-sucked. The lead singer must have been high on something, because no sober person thinks that plucking your guitar and spinning in a circle is a legit dance move.

I'm not kidding about that either, he spun in circles at least 3 times every song. Then he'd stop, look at his guitar and rip out a really lame guitar solo. He even took a sit-down at one point.

His skinny jeans were also hanging down past his ass. Maybe the dude has an incredibly long torso and as a result is icredibly low waisted, or maybe he just spun himself around one too many times and as a result can no longer dress himself propoerly, but everything about him made Rancid's show seem like a very long, bad sounding, 50 minute train-wreck.

I tried to get a picture of this, but this was all I snapped:

This is the dude in mid spin.

Sorry Manitoba folk, Blink already came through your area, but for everyone else, I highly recommend the show. Sitting through Rancid is totally worth it!

The Day my World Turned Upside Down

I dislike apples. A lot. They honestly disgust me. I hate the smell, I don't like the taste, and that crunching apple sound when someone takes a bite sends chills down my spine.

What does she find so hilarious about this?

In short, I find them gross, and don't enjoy anything apple related. Even looking at that photo grosses me out a bit.

Let's contrast this extreme prejudice and shocking hatred with something I truly enjoy! Like cashews for example!

I could eat an entire tin of these things in a single sitting. When it comes to to can of mixed nuts, I pick out the cashews because they're my favourite!

But last week I learned something truly disturbing:

CASHEWS GROW FROM APPLES

If you think I'm kidding, read this again:

CASHEWS

GROW

FROM APPLES

COMMENCE STATE: MIND = BLOWN

How can something so wonderful come from a food so awful? I know this is a different breed of apple, which is why it looks a little weird, but an apple is an apple; no if, ands, or buts about it!

Maybe I need to reevaluate my life choices, or at least my dietary decisions. I guess in the meantime I'll keep living my hypocritical lifestyle, and try to keep in mind that thousands of apples died in the slaughter of a cashew harvest.

That makes me a little bit happier.

Review: 30 Minutes or Less

30 Minutes or Less

Starring Jesse Eisenberg & Aziz Ansari

30 Minutes or Less is a the tale of a pizza boy whose monotonous, unremarkable existence, suddenly takes a turn when a bomb is strapped to him and he’s forced to rob a bank within ten hours or be killed in a grisly explosion.

Along the way, we learn about friendship and hear the term “Pussy” around a dozen times.

My synopsis probably doesn’t sell this movie very well, but I really enjoyed it! If you like Danny McBride, there’s lots of him doing his over-the-top delusional bad-ass routine. Plus Eisenberg and Ansari make a funny pair of nervous, inept geeks while the rest of the film is filled out with quite a few entertaining background characters.

It's filled with hearty laughs from start to finish, and when I think back on it, there’s a lot of clever dialogue that slipped right most of the audience. More than once I noticed I was the only one giggling away at jokes.

There's lots of action too. Although it's a little heavy on the CG, it's not bad. In this case, I think the movie benefits from having a smaller budget than most action comedies. I've found that the more money a movie has, the more likely a lull will be filled in with an explosion, versus a joke.

Overall:

8/10

Pros: This is the hardest I’ve laughed at a movie since Jackass 3D. It’s very juvenile humour, but it works. Do you laugh at Will Ferrell? If yes, then you’ll like this. The buddy comedy is a pretty worn out genre, this is a fresh enough take on it that while everything is totally predictable, you’re still going to laugh.

Cons: As stated above, it’s quite predictable. Does it detract from the movie? Not for me. Will it for other people? Most definitely. It also suffers from that mid-movie lull that a lot of comedies go through. I didn't mind it, but if you're not enjoying the movie to begin with, you'll probably hate that part.

Should you see it? If you saw the preview and laughed, the answer is yes. You will definitely like it.

However, if you don’t think the term “Ass Pussy” is funny, you will probably hate it.

Mr Scruff - Music Takes Me Up

Keepin' it Rail

You know what's awesome about living in a new city?

The hidden treasure.

No,I'm not living in the Caribbean, so there are no doubloons or rubies stuffed into a chest buried beneath the ground (that I've found so far) but there are the metaphorical sort.

Like the Saskatchewan Railway Museum!

This weekend The Girlfriend and I were looking for activities to do, and she suggested that we hit the internet to find entertainment. Like some god-given sign of a good-time, she instantly discovered the Railway Museum! Lo-and behold, it was just a quick drive outside Saskatoon.

Neither of us really knew what to expect, and after a couple wrong turns we found our way to a farmer's field with some trains in it.

Literally.

Then the good times began!

It starts off with a train ride on this yellow unit below. We rode the "Gang-car" down to the station at the back end of the museum, and you walk all the way back to the beginning.

Below you can see "The End of the Line" and the tour guide. Everyone wandered off as she was giving the start of the guided tour, mid-speech actually. One woman was left awkwardly paying attention to her the rest of us wandered off in different directions.
There's a few really cool relics from railway history here actually. Here's the mobile power generator.

I didn't read too closely, but from what I recall, this was a generator that was moved out to locations to provide power to an entire rail construction process. To me, it was mind-blowing that something this gigantic and powerful was hauled from site-to-site well before electricity was introduced to every town and home in Canada.

Here the equivalent of today's city buses.

I got a real kick out of the old ads

Here's a tidbit I learned about my girlfriend while on this visit as well: She's never seen a gopher.

I grew up on a farm where gophers ran across the front lawn daily. I can remember going with my father and my older brother while they shot gophers in fields. To be truthful, I usually swerve on the highway to hit gophers, and I even went and shot at them during spares in high school.

Gophers are everywhere! I never thought that someone would have never seen one. So, I took a photo to commemorate the occasion. Can you spot the gopher in this photo?

My girlfriend asked what me what exactly a gopher was, which got me thinking that I don't really know what they are. To explain it simply, I said, "Gophers are...gophers. They're like squirrels without the tails, or like rats who dig holes."

She thought they were cute.

Here's a train engine dedicated to plowing tracks. You'd hitch this up to the front of a train and plow the tracks as you go.
I wandered my way up to the top of one. I don't think I was supposed to be up there, but that's the excitement of the railway museum I guess.

Then there was this old railway map from CN Rails, I found Grande Prairie on it, before there were any of the major roads that are today. You can also see Highlights like Whitecourt and Dawson Creek on there.
And then I found the hometown of Pierson on there! Like many of the small towns in Manitoba, Pierson was a regular stop for the rails.

And finally, here's the last photo we took. This is pretty accurate to what my day to day life at work is nowadays.
So if anyone needs to know, this is what I look like at my new job in Saskatoon: I yell at people at the phones all day while sitting at a switchboard. So if the railroads need a new person to work their old timey switch boards, I could do that too.

All in all, the Railway museum was awesome. Its the most hands-on museum I've ever been to. I'm not that big into trains, but for anyone who likes Canadian history, or trains, this is an awesome stop!

The Doobie Brothers - Long Train Runnin'

The Month of Less, but Not All that Fewer, Unhealthy Things

So last night I was thinking about setting personal goals just for shits and giggles, and I thought I might try not drinking for one solid month.

Since moving to Saskatchewan where the price of liquor is dictated by a VERY conservative liquor board, I’ve curbed the casual drinking back significantly. It’s just not cost effective here. I mentioned this to my girlfriend who said something along the lines of

“That’s a good idea, but you could choose a better month to do it. We’re going to the horse races this weekend for a staff function. You won’t have even one beer?”

“No problem” I replied. “I can do that!”

“And then the next week is Saskatoon Ex…”

“Oh…” I said, “That’s trouble.”

“And then there’s a wedding to go to after that!”

So August may not be the best month to start a sobriety marathon. Especially considering that having a casual drink or two on a patio is awesome, and the summer weather has been spectacular in Saskatoon.

However, there’s a second thing I definitely could cut back on:

Eating Chips.

I love potato chips. I can’t stop myself once I get into a bag (or box) of them. Despite my best efforts I find myself eating them about twice a week. I don’t even have to particularly like the flavour; it’s all the salty goodness I crave. Let me loose on a bag of Old Dutch Ketchup, or Ruffles All Dressed, and they’ll be demolished.

Eating a huge amount of salt and bad carbs like that is terrible for the body, so it may be a good thing to lay off those for a while. So here’s the challenge I’m setting out for myself:

No more than two drinks a week for the entire month of August, zero total preferably.

And no potato chips AT ALL.

I think I’ll find a blood pressure machine and test that, as well as do a weigh-in just for scientific purposes. I really don’t exercise outside of my minimum half-hour of walking every day, so let’s see what less drinking and less salt does for an out-of-shape 22 year old.

Thus officially begins:

The Month of Less, but Not All that Fewer, Unhealthy Things

Wish me luck!

Billy Currington - Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer