Things go better with ^Co^ke...



The weekend was cool.

Friday I got off work a few hours early and took a walk around midtown. I kinda miss living in that area (I live about 1.5 miles from where anything within walking distance is these days). I miss walking three blocks to tonevendor, the Loft, Zelda's, The Distillery, Noah's, Metro Electronics, the corner store (now all my emergency beer runs are via the co-op), friend's houses, various coffee locations...pretty much everything in downtown that I like. So now when I want to take a walk around that area, I park my car at tonevendor, say "hi" to Dan and Heather (and whoever else is there) and begin my walk.

I found a used CD by this band at tonevendor. I guess the story behind them is that this guy, who was a famous children's song writer in the 50's had a son who wanted to revamp his fathers music for a 1970 urban children's show in Boston, and came across this crazy psychedelic jazz/funk band called Stark Reality. I never use this term, but I gotta say: it's sick as hell. Most of the songs consist of some dude playing the vibraphone through a fuzz box over deep grooves. Occasionally the singer busts in with children song lyrics: "The first seven letters of the alphabet... are all that you need to make music...ABCDEFG..." Great stuff. Whoever sold it to the record store was either hard up for crack money, or had it as a promo, having no clue what it was. I'm surprised Dan didn't take it home and keep it for himself.

Saturday there were just too many damn things going on. I was having a joint (as in combined) b-day party with Matt L. at his house in Oak Park. We told people to show up at 6, since there were a ton of shows going on that night, and if everybody showed up on time there would be enough time to have a party and go to the shows (including myself...who wanted to check out the Bright Ideas at The Fake Loft). Of course, no one showed up until 8 ish, I got wasted, and some of my friends who had no interest in checking out bands wanted to hang out all night...so that's what I did.

Sunday my friends Josh and Benji wanted to take me to Thunder Valley casino for some reason. I think they mainly wanted to eat a Fat Burger, play roulette and ogle at the cocktail waitresses. I wound up winning $0.35 on video poker (I stopped after winning a lot, losing a lot and breaking even). I can't justify blowing 50 dollars on shit like that.

Monday I had a nice day off. Helped my sister work on her website and just hung out.