May 2009 Archives
This Friday my upstairs housemate has some of his work showing (and for sale) at Artomatic. Artomatic is the Washington, DC area's one-of-a-kind art extravaganza, involving hundreds of regional artists, performers and volunteers. The free art festival features a wide variety of paintings, sculpture, photography, music, theater, poetry, dance and workshops.
The 2009 event will be held May 29 to July 5 at Half Street's 55 M Street, SE in Washington, DC's Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. Located directly above the West Entrance of the Navy Yard Metro Stop, located conveniently on the Green Line. The event will be open Wednesdays and Thursdays from noon to 10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 1 a.m., and Sundays from noon to 10 p.m. Artomatic will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission to Artomatic is always free for visitors.
On Friday OMG DJ TM™ spins at Apex.
On Saturday the Washington Renegades Rugby Football Club is hosting a tournament down on the Mall on the field behind the Holocaust Museum, near the parking lot for the Tidal Basin. Action begins at 10ish and should go on to the early afternoon. If you're just coming to watch, you don't need to register. There will be a grill and beer for sale for a kindly donation. It's our last hurrah for an unbeaten spring season, but we'll start up again in August.
Then on Saturday evening TNG and Homo/Sonic Present "Siezure," an alternative to the usual Saturday nights at Town.
I would post the graphic for this event but the flashing colors me have a grand-mal.
The night will feature a performance by The DC Kings at 11 PM, followed by DJ K La Rock, co-founder First Ladies DJ Collective starting at 11:15 PM.
This week's Metro Weekly cover features Jake Nodar, one of the stars of Discovery Channel's Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment. MWs editorial director Sean Bugg reveals more on his blog. I wish I knew about that reality show - I coulda been a contender!
Hot chicken with poultry, Cajun Bear with poultry. Can't stop with the poultry obsession.
Cougars set to invade DC. Will they eat all the Jennifers alive? Let's hope so.
Speaking of cougars, yesterday was Stevie Nicks' birthday (61), and tomorrow is Kylie Minogue's birthday (41). That left me in a canyon of OMG for the week.
From Phillip in the U.K., rooks (a European relative of the raven, crow and jay) are clever birds.
From Boobob: Portland, Oregon - the Beardiest City in America. Check out the slideshow, and I'm a fan of the dudes on pages 2 and 5.
Youk has some competition for goatee supremacy from Tim Redding of the New York Mets. He used to pitch for the Nats. How did I miss this?
I hit the ground running after such a relaxing weekend with early work days on Tuesday and Wednesday with a load of work plopped on my desk, and my last summer night class starting at 7pm and going until 10. It's nowhere near any convenient MetroRail stops and the commute back home late at night sucked big time.
Thanks to everyone who filled out that informal survey from the previous entry. Looks like I have some blog links to update based on those readers who have blogs, some of whom are old skool and I didn't know they were still blogging.
I just finished unpacking, doing laundry and drying out everything after this weekend's trip. For the most part I lucked out on the weather, only getting rain on Sunday but by then my tent was set up so I hunkered down to reading World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie Wars, by Max Brooks, to get me in the survivalist mood. It's really a great book about people, societal breakdown, military strategy and culture. The author did a lot of background research, and the zombies are just a tool to tell a story about humanity. They're going to turn it into a movie, and I'm not sure how I feel about that just yet. I hope they surprise me. Considering the book is a series of interviews with people involved in all stages of the outbreak, war and postwar reconstruction, it might be better as a miniseries or a series. But Hollywood never listens to me. I hope they don't fuck it up.
Anyhow, it took me longer to leave DC than it did to get to Front Royal on Saturday. I take full credit for the hassle because I slept in. I did get there with daylight to spare, but Red Creek Campground was full. I decided to check out the mist netting area used in the fall to band migrating birds, and it was clear of campers so I stayed there the first night and got some spectacular views and sounds that evening and the next morning.
The campsite in this picture looks like it's in disarray, but I was just drying things out while I ate breakfast before I packed it up again for the next leg of the trip.
On the hike in to Red Creek proper, I came across an unlucky Mongahela denizen:
It was a deer, probably taken by a hunter in the fall.
The creek forks where the trail hits Red Creek was also packed when I got there. Mental note: Memorial Day isn't a wise choice. I usually go there the first weekend in October when the leaves are changing. Best to pick a non-holiday 3-day weekend for a visit in the future.
I have a small notepad that I keep in my backpack to take notes on whatever, and add reminders of what I need to put in the pack before the next trip. It's at least as old as my pack, probably 15+ years. I hadn't opened it in a while and found notes in Cyrillic from a long time ago: Cholpon-Ata, Bosteri Guest House, Bereki Sanatorium, tel. 31943 5-25-84. That was when I hiked from Almaty, the capitol of Kazakstan, over the Tien Shan Mountains to Kyrgizstan with two fellow Peace Corps volunteers and two Russians, a British guy and a woman from The Netherlands. The destination "resort" did have the feel of a sanatorium, but it was welcome rest after that trip. I wasn't really prepared for high-altitude and alpine hikes at the time. Another set of notes tracked my mileage in my Ford Festiva as I drove across the country from Wisconsin to the West Coast: LaCrosse -> Worthington, MN -> Chamberlain, SD -> Sturgis, SD -> Little Big Horn/Garryowen -> Bozeman -> St. Regis. I think my final destination was Portland, Oregon.
While it's been rainy here in DC, it must have been a pretty dry spring up there as the creek was very low, but that meant an opportunity to spot fossils embedded in the rocks in the stream bed. Sometimes there were fossils, in other places where you could see the layers in the rocks there was coal. Click on the photo to the left to embiggen and see the fossil details. The other images embiggen too.
On my final morning in the wilderness I finally spotted a red eft crawling through my campsite. It was a goal to take more pictures on this trip and I managed to get a lot of nice photos.
I was eager to get back to allow me some time to unpack and launder, so I passed up the Woodbine Farm Market near Staunton Strasburg, VA on Highway 55 near where it links up to 81 and 66. It's a great place to get a pumpkin in the fall, and they sell pies and delicious oatmeal cookies that must have at least a half stick of butter in each one.
When I got back into town I made the mistake of going to the Ghetto Giant for the week's groceries, where all my enthusiasm and peace of mind from the trip was shattered by typical crappy DC customer service. Zombies would make better checkout clerks.
Adventures and travel always adds perspective, and during the hikes I tried to think of things to look at differently. So far all I can think of is to go backpacking more often.
<-- This is me this weekend, but outside.
Weather forecasts for the towns flanking the wilderness area I plan on going to do not look good, but when I look at the radar I don't see no thunderstorms. So I'm just gonna go, and if it's raining nonstop I'll turn around and come back and go out to one of the many fun venues in the city. I tried to look for a previous entry about my trips there in the past, but I had removed those archives it's been so long. I plan on taking a lot of pictures.
Last night I hauled my tired old backpack out of the crawlspace. It's been through a lot, and it may be time for a new backpack and tent some day soon. But then again I get out so seldom I can handle crappy equipment once a year. Until I find a decent place to store such things, there's no point in getting new stuff anyway.
I'll get up Saturday morning and drive west on 66 to Petersburg, WV (3-4 hours), then drive up into Monongahela National Forest (state roads 28/4, forest road 75) to the Dolly Sods wilderness area, hitting the top at Bear Rocks, then driving to the Red Creek Campground and parking the car. I will then take the Blackbird Knob Trail and take a left down Red Creek Trail to Red Creek proper and camp along the stream until Monday morning. I should get back to the Red Creek Campground and parking lot by Noon or 1ish, then drive back to DC. I will stop at the Dairy Queen in Petersburg for an Oreo Blizzard. I should be back in DC by 5ish on Monday.
Twitter has been interesting. I got a surge of follower notifications after I posted my blog entry about joining Twitter the other day. I'm assuming many of these followers found out about my Twitter account thru this blog. My metrics for reader visitation sucks and I've tried to install Google Analytics without much luck, but seeing the profiles on Twitter has given me some insight as to the bulk of my visitors (you're all gay, Gay, GAY!). What an interesting and varied group of people you are, and most of you don't comment (silent stalkers). Since my analytics suck, howabout you give a shout-out in the comments section today. Who are you? Where do you live? What are you doing here? How did you learn about this blog? What are your favorite entries or topics I write about?
Oh, and it's also interesting the number of long-time bloggers who regularly read this blog who do not include jimbo.info on their blogroll. And then there are those bloggers who have actually met me yet still do not have me on their blogroll. Yet all of the above have bloggers listed who haven't blogged in months. GIVE PROPS, BITCHES!
Yaaay, I love it when lawmakers from other states make decisions for residents of The District of Columbia. These douche bags want to introduce an anti-gay marriage bill in D.C. - ostensibly before we pass a bill allowing same-sex marriage by ourselves. One of these fuckers is from Utah. Utah and your Mormon residents: do me a favor go fuck yourselves. Anyway, we still do not have representation in Congress, so other fuckheads can do stuff like this for us. I hate that. I do not like the idea of foreign overlords making decisions for us when there is the possibility that we could one day select our own representatives in the House and Senate.
Here's a pic of me taken the other day by Chip at Ten Ren's Tea Time in College Park, MD.
It's vanilla bubble tea, and I'm sucking as many of those tapioca balls in my mouth as I can.
Wednesday MegaWoof: hot Dr. Bob Cargill - safe for work if you can handle his smouldering hotness, scroll down the link for his sultry beardy press pics.
I now have a Twitter account. It's interesting, but I'm still kinda old-fashioned and find even "simple" text messaging to be cumbersome. Twitter is simply annoying to me. I don't care what you're thinking every minute of the day, and I don't think you need to know what I'm thinking every minute of the day either. Instead, I prefer to serve it to you by the slice via blog entries, rather than intravenously throughout the day.
But I do see the usefulness of Twitter for information that actually matters, like the stuff I do for work. When I first set up my personal account on Twitter I discovered that my agency is the only disease- or emergency-management related Federal agency that does not have a Twitter account. And someone else is Twittering about the news I'm supposed to be sharing with the public and the press. How embarrassing. I mentioned to management that at the very least we should have an account to start building a cadre of followers, and use Twitter as a notification system for when we update our website press release page. And if an emergency were to actually happen, we could be ready with this simple notification system. We could have it set up in 10 minutes, but I've been told to wait. How frustrating and pointless. While we're at it, let me throw my toolbox in the dumpster and run around naked and screaming.
Anyway, let's escape to a fantasy world, shall we? I finally went to see Star Trek at an undisclosed location where the shows do not sell out. I thought the casting was brilliant, but the story was kind of busy at times. I mean how many times can you weave time travel into a plot? And let's blow up yet another homeworld while we're at it. But the action was fun, and I really liked Bones and the new kung fu serious Sulu.
I am debating on going backpacking at my usual trails in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area weather and cam. Some weather reports predict foul skies, some do not, but when you're up there and the weather is shitty, it's really shitty. Plus I've been there enough times to be able to blow off a trip if the weather promises to be uncomfortable. Still on the fence about it, we'll see.
Here is another sober, non-sensational story about H1N1, a disease which has made an acquaintance of mine a little famous in Peru. I advised him to get in touch with his Senate/House representatives and with the U.S. Embassy in Peru, lest they decide to make him into a political tool in some way.
One of my favorite advice columnists, Dr. Andrea Bonior also has some mental health tips for those of you worrying about H1N1 in her Baggage Check column.
Popular gay clothing store Universal Gurl was robbed by brazen theives who were caught on camera. I think they need some 300+ pound doormen who know how to tackle a skinny kid. Choose a single target, bring him down, and waterboard the thief later. His friends will not stick around to retrieve him and he will talk. But that's just me. I do like to buy my package-enhancing colored cotton underwear there, and a pair of tight-butt jeans I purchased there years ago is still in good shape.
Surprise! Newt Gingrich didn't know what the fuck he was talking about regarding the Uighurs. The Uighurs respond to the Gingrich douchebaggery.
And finally this animated graphic, simply because I loved Chris Tucker's "Ruby Rhod" character so much in the film The Fifth Element.
On Tuesday May 19th, 2009, GLOV (DC's GLBT Anti-Violence Task Force) is holding a candlelight vigil and march to raise awareness about hate crimes against the GLBT community and to renew focus on the murder of Durval Martin to hopefully bring in new leads and help MPD close this case.
On December 16, 2008 Durval Martins was shot and killed while walking home at the intersection of 11th and Q streets, NW in DC’s Logan Circle neighborhood. Local community leaders will be in attendance to raise awareness, enlist community support in finding those responsible and condemn hate-biased violence. Durval’s identical twin brother, Pedro, will be there to join us. We ask that you come, too – bring friends, neighbors, colleagues, and families -- and please wear white to show your support.
WHEN: Tuesday, May 19, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. (estimated)
WHERE: Introductory remarks at Reeve Center Courtyard (Corner of 14th and U streets, NW). Procession will head South on 14th street, East on Q street, end at 11th and Q streets, NW and end with a moment of silence at corner of 11th and Q streets, NW (the site of Durval Martins’ murder).
WHAT TO WEAR: Attendees are encouraged to show solidarity by wearing white.
There's a great photo essay with audio in the New York Times about a straight player who joins his gay brother on the Gotham Knights rugby team to bond.
Happy Syttende Mai! Perhaps on this day in observance of Norway's independence we can learn how to be frugal like this country that has bucked today's economic woes.
Newt Gingrich thinks he knows everthing about Central Asia's Chinese Muslim minority, the Uighurs. During my Peace Corps experience several of my students and friends were Uighur - not all of them are Islamist militants.
Today me and Mari went to see The Garden at the E Street theaters. The documentary film is about a community garden that gets displaced, and the gardeners try their best to preserve it through activism and legal routes. Mari and I are likely to face similar resistance in our chicken anarchy efforts.
On our way back home from the movie, we noticed that the McDonald's at 9th and E Streets NW had nailed a sign to the tree in their treebox advertising that they maintain the flowers outside their store. They get an A for effort for maintaining the treebox, but a FAIL for nailing the sign to the tree. Nails in the trunk or damage to the bark can open a route for disease entry into a tree.
We may lose our favorite bearded city administrator Dan Tangherlini to the Obama cabinet.
I'm loving this new track Bulletproof from a group called La Roux from the U.K.:
It reminds me of a resurrection of New Order, old Eurythmics, and Erasure. Fun, bouncy electronica.
Kenneth in the 212 has some good advice for Madonna in light of Kylie's arrival to North America this fall:
"YOU'RE NO FUN ANYMORE. Do I really want to shell out 200 bucks to watch you do the same old hypersexual dance moves with your same old 20 mixed-race bisexual dancers (all in unison, now!) while hanging off a cross or showing some other tired "political" or otherwise "shocking" video AGAIN -- all while you REFUSE to sing perform the songs your fans want to hear most??"Having been to a Madonna concert I can tell you that her shows are all about her - you can almost feel the invisible wall that protects her. Whereas Kylie is a SHOWGIRL!
My neighbor Mari is obsessed with chickens, and I think she really, really wants a chicken coop in the city. But in many cities having chickens is illegal, but so is pot smoking or sales and distribution, or tax evasion, or illegal squatting, all of which happen on my block on a daily basis and neither the city nor the cops don't do a thing about it so the authorities can suck it! I'm gonna start setting up a poultry facility or an aquaculture farm some day soon. I call for CHICKEN ANARCHY IN THE CITY!
I am still obsessed with Homer's chicken, named Henny-Penny. BrettCajun is another blogger with chickens, but you don't often see pictures of his chickens because that would take up valuable blogging space of Brett pictures, of which there are many on his blog.
Other poultry obsessive links:
Build a stealth coop, community chickens, poultry now urban hipster chic, WaPo Chicken article and image gallery, Just Food: The City Farms.
A fascinating article from The City Paper about our very own Beltsville Small White turkey, the progenitor of most of today's turkey stock. This special bird is apparently a world poultry heritage line that people are trying to preserve.
This is a tilapia, which can also be grown for food:
It looks like it will be a very quiet weekend for me, with the exception of Blowoff on Saturday night. Everyone is out of town, not that my phone was ringin' when they were in town...I am getting tired of communicating with people solely through Facebook. We have voices people, let's use them and the fingers Zod gave us to dial the frikkin' phone!
A few more blogs died in the past few weeks. R.I.P "Art Is For Losers" and "Glennalicious." Blogicide is sad. (correction: AIFL is not dead, it just moved)
Thankfully, Miss Deborah Gibson is still blogging, and is in an incredible new movie called ‘Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus’. The confluence of elements in this film is almost too much to bear. I would probably explode if Crystal was fighting Alexis in the water over the carcasses.
I went to the theaters yesterday with the intent to see Star Trek , thinking on a Tuesday night it wouldn't be crowded. It was sold out. So I went to see Wolverine instead, which was good fun. Jackman was good in his role, Wolvie and Sabretooth's dad was hot, but the guys I'm hot for in movies always die within minutes. I LOVED Gambit and of course Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds shines in any movie he's in, but as you know I'm a bit biased. If a Deadpool film is really in the works, I'm all for it.
I'll see Trek soon enough I'm sure. Meanwhile it's been fun observing the internecine geek war between Trek traditionalists, Next Gen Trekkers and the new Reboot Fanatic faction. Nerds everywhere are crying, pulling their own or others' hair out and are generally outraged. Count Lileks in as a Reboot faction member:
Engineering should look like Engineering, with a big throbbing warp core with lights that go up and down and catwalks all around it, because if there aren’t any catwalks there’s nothing from which people can be catapulated, screaming, when the ship is attacked.
Hip citydwellers challenging chicken ordinances. Retailers can't throw enough discounts at customers these days.
Finally, after two years the iris in the front pond has sent up some flowers:
The Trouble With Quibbles: With Films Like 'Star Trek,' Overzealous Fans Exert an Unhealthy Pressure on Moviemakers. A brilliant essay on the downfalls of extreme nerdery.
Norwegians set to descend on Westby for Syttende Mai. Syttende Mai means "May 17th," the Norwegian celebration of independence from the evil Danes.
It turns out the flu that's been going around isn't really Mexican, it's full name being "swine influenza A (H1N1) triple reassortant virus, A/Wisconsin/87/2005 H1N1." It originated in Wisconsin in 2005. Finally, a sober and scientific review of this recent outbreak in Newsweek:
It is the manner of human beings to seek blame during times of fear. Fingers are now pointing, either at the entire pig species Sus domestica, or at the nation of Mexico. Such exercises in blame are not only scientifically ill founded, but are likely to prompt government actions that, at the very least, are useless and, at worst, harmful for efforts to control a pandemic.
The author is Laurie Garrett, a science writer with a science background, and the only writer ever to have been awarded all three of the Big "Ps" of journalism: The Peabody, The Polk (twice), and The Pulitzer. It's a long article but well worth your time to read.
Early-morning birdwatching arrived way too early on Saturday, but by then I had received and slept on my new mattress. It's hard to tell how much good it did me on such a short night - in fact I didn't sleep well at all, but did wake up without soreness, which is a good sign. By today I think I've adjusted to it for the most part. It's very firm and is not concave like my other mattress.
Me and Michael headed out to the The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland for the International Migratory Bird Day Bird Count (Census) at about 5am. We joined Bryan who had already been there for some time owling and listening for turkeys. I had heard enough turkeys during the week, so we opted to arrive "late" by birding standards. The sun was already up and the mist across the farmlands was dissipating, but the birds were still singing.
The birds were going nuts and singing to beat the band, cooped up as we were due to the rainy weeks beforehand. Even species that normally do their singing from the underbrush were at the tops of the trees competing with other species for space to perform, like this wood thrush. They all wanted a piece of sunshine at the tops of the trees, including buntings, bluebirds, grosbeaks and cedar waxwings. No new species spotted this year, I think we have that area covered for a while.
A summer tananger was singing in the same branches of the same tree as the summer tananger we spotted in 2007. It could have been the same bird, but more likely was of the family that prefers to nest and sing there year after year. These are the things naturalists and biologists notice, and when normally predictable behavior or events change, something is amiss. Like "Hey there's no polar icecap here anymore, and I can't find any polar bears. Something is wrong." If the tananger wasn't there the next summer, something might be up. Or the tananger may find a condo there upon returning in the spring, and would think something was up.
More beehives were in the beehive area than in previous years. I guess they got some funds for more research into why bee colonies have been declining. The hives and their bees looked fine to me, but they all smelled really bad. Maybe they smell that way after weeks of rain, or maybe all the bees have body odor. Maybe at some point they get sick of each others' bee b/o and go solo. But you won't find them at Home Depot like all the partnered bees.
Then we went to a new spot near a swamp which I hadn't been to before and spotted a bald eagle near its nest. The carp were having a good time in the flooded stream and were jumping and surfacing all over the place. Maybe they were channel catfish, I don't know, the water was too muddy to tell.
After birding, I went to go do mega-laundry at the ghetto-ass laundromat on Swann Street to wash all the cold weather quilts and covers to be put away for the summer. Some day we hope laundromat machines will take debit cards instead of handfuls of quarters. Handfuls of Quarters are retarded, unless you're at Chuck E. Cheese's. But I'll bet they take debit cards at Chuck E. Cheese's these days too.
Everyone went to see Star Trek over the weekend, and by now I've heard how awesome it is and I know the whole plot as well. But I will still go during the week when the crowds are a bit thinner. Did you know that Vulcan gets destroyed in this movie? Neither did I, but everyone told me it did.
If they weren't going to see Star Trek, the rest of my partnered friends were being homebound all weekend and breastfeeding from their moobs or something. DC is a tough city for the single 30something. By your 30s you start to realize DC is a great town for 20somethings exploring their relationships, but by your 30s many of your friends are hooked up - your straight friends are busy producing young and your gay friends are coupled and increasingly become domestically inflexible. They are no fun anymore, lose all spontaneity and never want to leave their house. You're glad for their relationship success, but part of you must mourn, for you will not hear from them as much as you used to. This is why you only see some gay people at Home Depot. I don't necessarily like to go out all the time, but one must to meet people. Fortunately I have social 20something friends to do things with, but they are often very hyper and lack perspective. Regardless, when they partner up I will lose them to domesticity and breastfeeding as well, and will mourn their loss but will celebrate their inevitable moob development due to immobility and inflexible domestic schedules.
With all this extra time free from breastfeeding responsibilities or loitering at Home Depot, I took a nice bike ride up the C&O Canal towpath trail today. Geese were rearing their goslings, and the trails were full of people strolling and biking. I went to a favorite spot where I normally could hop across rocks to see the sights, but the river was swollen from all the rain we've been having and I didn't want to muddy my fine white running shoes. So instead I found a log and sat to make Mother's Day calls. Mom is fine, I forgot my nephew's birthday, and mom was wondering if my niece's prom dress was too slutty. I saw pictures and I thought the dress was fabulous. During the call I saw an orchard oriole, brown tree creeper, tufted titmice, and a spotted sandpiper.
Happy 15th burfday to Metro Weekly. When I first arrived in DC in 1997 or so I thought it had always been here. May your pages never suffer a tragic Font Fight.
More perspective on this media explosion about this flu - what if the world had treated AIDS like it has for this flu outbreak? What if the President had rang the alarm instead of waiting for six years? By that time, nearly 21,000 people had died from the disease. Reagan's then communications director Pat Buchanan said the disease was "nature's revenge on gay men." By that logic, does that mean this flu is nature's revenge on Mexicans?
Apparently we must now drop the 'é' (or "ey" sound) from Beyoncé's name. We are now only to refer to her as Beyoncъ with a hard "tvyordiy znahk" or Cyrillic Russian "hard sign" at the end. I don't know why, I don't make these rules, I just follow them when I'm told.
My new favorite response when someone is whiney:
"What's that noise? It must be the 'Waaaahmbulance'!"
This weekend at Town, a fly on the wall may have heard this conversation:
"Mmmm....he's cute. Kinda looks like a furry Jewish David Boreanaz with a beard."
"Gurrrrl, he's a hottie but he totally played around with ______'s heart for over a year."
To which I replied "Sweetie, if he wants to play with my heart he's gotta be able find it first."
So a four-time divorcée, tax evader and convicted crackhead is telling me who I can marry. Oh Barry, just go away you smelly old crackhead. To make it more frustrating, a Mormon legislator three months into his term also has a say in the matter.
As you may have read, Kylie will tour North America in the fall. I plan on catching the October 11 show in NYC if I can snag a ticket. Perhaps she may also expand her tour dates through DC if we're lucky. Did you see the huge mushroom cloud exploding somewhere outside the Beltway this afternoon? That was me when I heard the news.
Wednesday Woof, cuz my honey pot is still on fire - this is the dude who played Angel in the last X-Men movie, Ben Foster:
Woofy, with a dash of adorkable.
This Just In and I Just Peed My Pants:
INTERNATIONAL POP ICON KYLIE MINOGUE
ANNOUNCES FIRST EVER NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
Kylie’s 6-City Tour Kicks Off September 30th
Includes A Performance At The Historic Hollywood Bowl In Los Angeles
Multi-Platinum Aussie Superstar To Make An Appearance on NBC’s “TODAY” with Kathie Lee and Hoda Kotb on May 8th
(New York, NY – May 6, 2009) – North American fans of international pop superstar Kylie Minogue will finally get a chance to experience the icon live in concert when her 6-city tour kicks off in Oakland, CA on September 30th (full schedule below). Over the course of her extraordinary 20-year-career, Minogue has been a global force in pop music with more than 40 million albums sold worldwide, 50 hit singles including the U.S. Billboard dance-chart toppers “Can’t Get You Our of My Head,” “Love At First Sight,” “Slow,” and the Grammy-Award winning “Come Into My World,” countless awards and accolades including an OBE from the Queen and 8 sold-out world tours including last year’s KylieX2008 tour which traveled to 21 countries throughout Europe, South America, Dubai, Asia, New Zealand and Australia, generating and estimated $70,000,000 in ticket sales. Kylie couldn’t be more excited about her first tour through North America.
“I’ve wanted to tour in America and Canada for years and know that fans have been waiting a long time for this,“ said Minogue. “I’m thrilled that the opportunity has finally arrived.”
The tour is being produced by Los Angeles-based concert promotion firm Bill Silva Presents (BSP). Company CEO Bill Silva commented, “Kylie has such a successful career outside of North America that it has taken quite a while to find a window in her schedule for the U.S. and Canada. Her amazing fans in North America will be well rewarded for their patience when they experience her show and its entire spectacle. We are confident in the tour’s success, and hope that Kylie will make this the first of many tours to our shores.”
Tickets will go on sale in each market on the weekend of May 15, however early access to tickets in the U.S. will be available to American Express Cardmembers beginning this Thursday, May 7, through Ticketmaster. Members of Kylie.com's mailing list will receive an email that contains information of special ticket pre-sale offers.
Kylie’s last visit stateside was in early 2008 with a promotional trip to support the release of her 10th studio album X (Astralwerks/Capitol) in which she performed on Ellen, Dancing With The Stars and the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Kylie has since toured the globe with KylieX2008, hosted the prestigious Brit Awards, earned her 5th Grammy® nomination, released a range of bed linen called “Kylie at Home,” released her 5th fragrance “Couture,” released Boombox: The Remix Album 2000-2008, and traveled to Mumbai to participate in the most expensive Bollywood feature film ever made entitled “Blue.” In addition to a cameo role in the film, Kylie performs the main musical number written and recorded with internationally renowned composer AR Rahman. Kylie shows no signs of slowing down with the announcement of the North American tour and plans to commence work on her 11th studio album.
Kylie Minogue released her first single “Locomotion” in July 1987. The Little Eva remake became an instant hit around the world and launched the music career of the now icon. Kylie is one of the world’s most successful female artists with over 40 million albums sold, 50 hit singles, ten studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD’s, plus her Greatest Hits and Ultimate Kylie double album, multiple video packages and eight world tours.
Since 1979, Bill Silva Presents (BSP) has produced over 10,000 events from small clubs to major stadiums all over the world. Shows produced have included such prodigious talents as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Simon & Garfunkel, The Police, Madonna, Nirvana, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. BSP have also produced North American Tours with Dr. Dre’s “Up In Smoke Tour,” the most successful hip hop tour of all time; and international tours with comedian Margaret Cho.
For information on Kylie’s North American tour please visit the Kylie Minogue North American tour widget at http://www.billsilvaentertainment.com/kylie.
For more on Kylie Minogue, including news updates, photos, streaming audio and video, and downloads, please visit www.kylie.com.
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Kylie Minogue North American Tour
Sep. 30 Oakland, CA Fox Theater
Oct. 3 Las Vegas, NV The Pearl (Palms Hotel & Casino)
Oct. 4 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl
Oct. 7 Chicago, IL The Congress Theater
Oct. 9 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
Oct. 11 NYC, NY Hammerstein Ballroom
I woke up again with full-body soreness as if I had played a rugby match the night before. But I had not played a match, nor had I worked out. It's the bed, I realized. I've the same mattress for a long time, and I suspect it's time for a replacement. I've been waking up more and more sore every month, and the longer I sleep, the more tired and achy I feel. Not the way sleep is supposed to be I suspect.
So I finally bit the bullet and decided to shop for a new mattress this weekend after some research. On this journey I discovered the most informative single-topic blog I've ever read in my life: Mattress-Tips.com. I gotta tell ya, if you have a question about mattresses, it's on this blog. It must be written by people in the mattress industry or something, but you don't need to go anywhere else for information, it's all on Mattress-Tips.com.
Price was no matter by this point, I'll pay whatever I have to for comfort and rest. But I lucked out with a big fat sale at Macy's, and they couldn't throw enough discounts at me either. They met my criteria being metro-accessible with free delivery. When I got there Uncle Fester helped me select the right one. I was shocked to find that even their low-end Aztec Sacrifice™ Basalt Slab model was more comfortable than my own. I ended up selecting the Simmons Beautyrest, which arrives Friday. I can't wait to get a decent night's sleep. I knew something was up when I thought the pull-out couch at Stephen's house with the backbreaking support rod was more comfortable than my own bed.
I missed “Expedition Grizzly featuring Casey Anderson,” on Sunday. Casey is kinda woofy, so I hope he doesn't get eaten by the bears.
More hotness: that Old Spice Centaur commercial model's name is Scott Bailey. I gotta get my ass over to Narnia soon...anyone have an old musty wardrobe filled with fur coats that's kinda drafty?
NOBODY TOLD ME RYAN REYNOLDS WAS IN THE NEW X-MEN MOVIE?!? What's wrong with you people?
Nice pit shot. Sadly, he's beardless, but I'm still gonna go see it. I hear he saves the film with his smartass remarks, as he did in Blade III.
