Odds and Ends

I saw Cloverfield this week. I liked it a lot. Here's how I approached the movie: If that was me who found the video camera, you're damn right I'd watch the whole video. It was highly entertaining and in a few scenes I even jumped!

If you're into zombie movies...and I am, I'm telling you...here's a clip of the forthcoming George Romero movie, Diary of the Dead. I can't wait to see this one!

And, last, but certainly not least....LOST is finally back on the air tonight. I've been patiently waiting for the past 253 days for a new episode. Tonight, my friends, is the night.

Please note that I will not be taking any phone calls or emails from 9pm (EST) to 10pm (EST) tonight.

What're Words For, Part 21

Word: Catch (v.)
Definition: to freeze, usually temporarily

Usage: "The pipes caught in our cellar last night. My husband forgot to plug in the heat tapes."
"Well, you can't do nawthin' about the weather. And in six months, it'll be hot enough to knock up a goat."

(Definition from: "How To Talk Yankee", by Gerald Lewis & Tim Sample, copyright 1979, 1986 by The Thorndike Press; copyright 1989 by the First North Country Press)

World Series Trophy and Hot Stove Night

The World Series trophy was in my hometown yesterday, but it was at the WZON Hot Stove Night that I was able to get a picture of...and with....the trophy.

Pretty cool, eh?

Joe Castiglione and Gordon Edes were very entertaining with their Red Sox stories, in addition to providing insight on the Red Sox and their decisions involving acquiring players and setting up for the long baseball season. They also told some amusing stories about their experiences and also some of baseball players, both current and past.

Joe Castiglione (left) and Gordon Edes talking about the Red Sox

I had a great time at this event despite the three tools sitting in front of us who wouldn't shut up for the whole event...chit chatting amongst themselves - loudly. Others around us were in disbelief that these three dudes could be so rude. And then the lead tool asked the dumbest question of the night: "With Terry Francona and the Red Sox winning the World Series twice in four years, does this mean we're going to be stuck with that bum (Francona) as the head coach for a long time?" Yeah....this idiot actually thinks Terry Francona is a "bum" for a manager.

Thankfully, both Joe and Gordon pointed out that this "bum" has won two World Series in four years for the Red Sox, the first of which ended their 86-year drought, and most importantly, he's 8-0 in both World Series appearances! The crowd cheered in support of the greatness of Francona's managing ability as the dingbat sat back down...and immediately started mumbling to his other buddies. Did he actually think anybody would agree with his imbicilic question about Francona being a bum? Again I have to say...what a tool.

The idiot and his band of noobs did not ruin the evening, though, as the crowd was so into the event and it was obvious that both Joe and Gordon did not see this evening event as something they were obligated to do, but something they loved to do....and that is to sit around with other fans talking baseball.

And there was food and drinks: red hot dogs (natch), popcorn, chicken wings, lobster rolls, Cracker Jack and Pepsi products. The sponsors all had sign up boxes for raffles where you could win anything from $100 cash, to a modern ice fishing trap (this was a much sought after item...this is Maine after all!), dinner for two, to name a few. At the end of the event, WZON even raffled off the recliners that Joe and Gordon sat in during the evening!

A thanks from myself and my chummy who went with me to WZON, Joe Castiglione, Gordon Edes, the Bangor Civic Center and all of the awesome sponsors who supported this event. It was a blast, and I can't wait until next year for it to come back.

And with any luck, the 2008 World Series Trophy will be coming with them....

Patriots Victorious!

Well, it was awesome, I'm telling you. Seeing the Patriots win today in Foxboro was awesome. It was my first time seeing the Patriots live and my first time in Gillette Stadium.

The Patriots beat the San Diego Chargers by a score of 21-12, and will now move on to the SuperBowl, number XLII, in Phoenix, Arizona on February 3. They will face.....are you sitting down?....the New York "football" Giants, who beat the Green Bay Packers in OT, 23-20.

A couple of pics for you, and I'll post a few more later.

The Sun Sets on the Chargers Hopes.....losers

Foxborough or Bust!

While I love bust, I have to go with the Foxborough today. It's nearly 6am, and I'm waiting for my ride to the New England Patriots/San Diego Chargers game.

It's gonna get wild.....look for me on TV.

Patriots Game and World Series Trophy Updates

Whew...it's gonna be bahmy at Gillette Stadium on Sunday for the Patriots/Chargers clash. Game time temperature is supposed to be around 20 degees Farenheit (-7 Celcius), and dropping to below 10 Farenheit by the time the game hits the second half. Oh...did I mention the winds gusting to 20mph (32kph). Yeah...it's gonna be cold.

Here's our section....up at the top.

We'll be coming back from Foxboro on Monday morning, and then going to the hot stove night event that evening. It has been confirmed that the 2007 World Series Trophy, won by the Boston Red Sox I'd like to remind all of you, will indeed be at the gather, and I am so ecstatic about this news! The trophy is also going to be displayed earlier in the day right here in my town of Orono at the University of Maine, inside of the ice hockey arena...Alfond Arena...from 1:30pm until 4pm.

It's going to be one helluva fun weekend, I'm telling you: Patriots/Chargers AFC Divisional Championship game Sunday afternoon, and Red Sox baseball chat with Joe Castiglione and Gordon Edes...and the World Series Trophy...Monday night. Awesome.

That, my friends, is the Finest Kind of Pork.

GO PATRIOTS!

Tom Cruise is Fucking Crazy

Maybe he's done a good movie here and there ("A Few Good Men", "Rain Man", "Born on the Fourth of July")...even a great one occassionally ("Magnolia"). But he's out of his fucking mind, I'm telling you.

Don't belive me? Watch this 9 minute video clip of him talking about Scientology. The "Church of Scientology" ....I just can't say that without giggling....had the video pulled from YouTube, but Defamer.com has a copy. Go see it now before it gets pulled from there, too.

AFC Championship Game: Patriots vs Chargers

And guess what, dear TFKoP readers? I'LL BE AT THE GAME!!!

Yes, you read that correctly. I.....TFKoP.....will be AT the game. A chummy of mine scored some tickets from a friend of a friend. I'm digging pretty deep into my bank account to pay for my ticket, but I just have to do this. I'm skipping a planned summer get-away so that I can afford to make this football game happen. And I can honestly say that I did not have to spend more than $401 to buy the ticket. **gulp**

There will be 4 of us heading South down I-95 on Sunday morning....like 7am early. It'll take us about 4 1/2 - 5 hours to make the journey, and who knows how long it'll take to actually get into the parking lot as I expect that traffic will probably be backed up. I've never been to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA but my experiences living near the stadiums in Philly for over 12 years taught me that traffic gets busy as shit when there's a game. Regardless, we'll be in Section 307 for the game! It's one of the upper sections, but we're not so close to the railing that we risk falling over and out of the stadium each time we have to up-swing our arms when the wave goes by.

This is the first time I will have ever seen the Patriots play live and in person. They should have no problem crushinating the San Diego Chargers. Once that's done, it'll only be a two week wait for Super Bowl XLII (that's 42) in Phoenix. The Patriots will continue their dominance and also crush in that game against the winner of the Green Bay/NY Giants game being played in Green Bay on Sunday night. We'll be watching that game from our hotel room in Foxborough, and then head back to good ole Orono on Monday morning.

When the Patriots finish these next two games with resounding victories, not only will they be SuperBowl champions again...their 4th time this millenium...they will also be the first team in the NFL to EVER finish the season at 19-0. Hats off to the 1972 Miami Dolphins for having a 17-0 season that included a SuperBowl, but your time has passed and it's time for someone else to go undefeated, and it might as well be the team I cheer for!

Let's face it, if your football team goes undefeated through the regular season, then undefeated through the playoff cycle, you'd damn well better win the big game. Otherwise, you had an okay season that FAILED to meet the objective you set at the beginning of the season, which was to be the champions. No win in the big game just makes you a good, not great, team.

Besides, can you imagine being on a team that is undefeated through the whole season, only to lose in the championship game? That's gotta be as bad as being seen with the hottest chick on the planet, marrying her, and then on your wedding night finding out that she's a DUDE!!!!

So, LET's GO PATRIOTS! I'll be cheering, and freezing, for you...all in the name of being a fan. And besides, I'll be where so many others wish they were....actually at the game!!!

Most Hits...No, Not Hits of Pot You Drug-Minded Readers

The most hits that TFKoP gets on this blog come from searches for MacCutcheon Whiskey, the top-notch booze seen a couple of times in the awesome show Lost.


At least 5 times a week someone comes to this blog because they've searched for this televsion-show whiskey on Google or some other search engine. The hits come in from not only my US readers, but also from visitors in other countries including, but not limited to, the UK, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and my neighbor to the North, Canada.

And speaking of Lost, here in the US we only have.... **checking Lost countdown clock on the right side of this blog** ....18 days (as of this posting) until Lost comes back for Season 4.

I. Am. So. Friggin'. PSYCHED!!!

Turntable and Vinyl...What????

Yes, it's true, I still have all of my albums. Vinyl albums. I have a lot of them. I'm not the person with the most albums of all time....not even close, I imagine. But the 650-700 that I do have I treat like you all treat your kids: some I like a whole lot better than others; some are a whole lot better looking than other ones; some of them get way more attention from me than the others do; and some I'd just like to put up for sale on eBay. Yeah, I know what you're saying: "TFKoP, how could even say that about me and my kids?? I would NEVER think one was better looking than another one...." hahaha!

Well, for the past couple of years my turntable has been broken, so my albums have not gotten any playing time during its absence. I've dilly-dallied around about getting a new turntable, instead getting this or that, figuring I'd just pick one up "soon". Well, "soon" turned into two years, but thankfully, "soon" finally arrived this week. I finally got a new turntable.

My Panasonic PL-990 Stereo Turntable arrived this week. I found it on Amazon.com (I'll give them the plug) and it was through Amazon.com that the sale was facilitated between myself and the seller, J&R Music World, out of NYC.



Hooking the turntable up to my existing stereo was easy, but the hard part was to come: which 33rpm album to play first. Not such an easy decision when there are so many albums to pick from. Do I play the first album I ever owned (The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers)? Do I play something from the alternative rock era (REM's Murmer)? Do I just close my eyes and randomly pick an album from one of the 6 boxes that I have filled (Lords of the New Church's Lords of The New Church)? Yikes...this might not be so easy to do.

After careful consideration, I decided to play Wilco's Sky Blue Sky album first. Here's why: Wilco just released this album last year....that's 2007. Yes, hard to believe a band would release something on vinyl in this day and age, but they did. Of course it was available on CD also and via download, but I loved that they took the time to release it on the old format of vinyl. And being a Wilco fan, it was a no-brainer that I was going to get a vinly copy in addition to the CD version. Vinyl Sky Blue Sky has been patiently waiting for a needle to caress her grooves (wow...that sounded dirty...nice...) and this was the perfect opportunity to break in a new turntable. And it's such a great set of music, which always helps. For this album, Wilco's sound harkens back to those early/mid-70s sounds reminiscent of the Allman Brothers, or The Grateful Dead...that mellow, laid back rock. "Impossible Germany" and "Shake It Off" are slow building rockers, and you can just lay back to enjoy "Sky Blue Sky" or "Please Be Patient With Me". One of the 5 best albums, or CDs, or 2007.

Here are the other 4 albums that were next to make their way onto the turntable. Journey's 1982 release Departure. I imagine some of you are groaning about this choice. But I'm not lying when I say that I loved Journey when I was in high school. Hell, I still love Journey. Not the new lineup with the different singer though, as you may remember Neil Schon and Journey kicked Steve Perry out of the band in the 1998 because he had degenerative bone loss in his hips and it would've delayed their tour for him to have surgery. So the band booted him and replaced him with a guy who looked exactly Steve Perry, hit high notes like Steve Perry, and whose name was Steven Augeri (Oh-jerry), which even SOUNDS like 'Perry'. That lineup didn't last long and he has since been replaced by Jeff Scott Soto, and more recently he was replaced with Arnel Pineda. Despite all that recent crap, this album, Departure, for me is their best album. It has the best line-up of their several (Infinity and Evolution also had this line-up), and the tunes run from rock ("Anyway You Want It"), to bluesy ("Walks Like a Lady", "Line of Fire") to quiet and mellow ("Good Morning, Girl"). It's a great album. And it was great hearing it with the hisses and pops you can only get from a turntable needle.

The third album to play was Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School by Warren Zevon. This was the first album he released after Excitable Boy, which contained his one and only hit "Werewolves of London". Though this album did not reach the masses as easily as his previous one, it was an album that just rocked. The title track, the cover of "A Certain Girl", "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" and "Play It All Night Long". Great album by one of my all-time favorite musicians.

Hermitage by the Waxing Poetics came on fourth. Who the hell are the Waxing Poetics, you ask? A fair question. The Waxing Poetics are a band that I came to know during my stay in Virigina Beach while I was in the Navy. I was stationed in VA Beach from 1985 to 1987 and there was a decent alternative music scene that had taken hold in in this East Coast city. The Boneshakers, Kings Dominion and The Waxing Poetics were just three of the many local bands playing the alternative music circuit in Virginia Beach. I saw all of them play so many times at Cafe Loco, The Jewish Mother, Waves, Dominic's and Coogans. The Waxing Poetics were great live, and they have a jangly-pop-alternative sound that is both hummable and catchy. You can't help but get up and groove when this album is on. I miss the days of seeing them live. The went on to release two more albums that moved away from the jangly sound to one that was more thoughtful and a little dark, but they were great albums (Bedtime Stories and Manakin Moon). I'm so glad that I have this on vinyl as I don't even know if "Hermitage" can even be found anymore, let alone as a platter. "Mrs. Dance's Skeleton", "If You Knew Sushi", "Beauty and The Beatitudes" and "Walking on Thin Legs" are just 4 of the 11 great tracks on this album. And Mike Mills, bassist for REM, was one of the producers of this album along with producer-extraodinaire Mitch Easter.

Led Zeppelin had to make an appearance for the turntable to be properly broken-in, so Physical Graffiti was heard for a long time yesterday. And by "heard" I mean throughout the whole friggin' neighborhood cuz I had it CRANKED. You tell me a rock-album side better than side 2 of this two-album set: "Houses of the Holy" followed by "Trampled Underfoot" followed by "Kashmir". Pure. Rock. Bliss. Side note: what do you think of when you hear "Kashmir" playing on the radio? Me? I always think of the scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High when this song plays as Stacey and Mark are makikng out. Great great movie, by the way.



I couldn't wind down the turntable without making sure that it also worked on the 45rpm setting. So, since Zep had just completed I kept the theme alive and cranked my Japanese-import copy of "Immigrant Song", which has on its B-side the non-album-release song "Hey Hey What Can I Do". What a great fucking song!!!!!! I love that song. Interestingly, if you can see in the pic, there is a liner-notes paper that came with the 45 of this song. It has the lyrics to "Immigrant Song" both in English and in Japanese.

Ahhhh.....I'm so happy having a funtioning turntable once again. I can just see all of my vinyl getting some spins in the very near future, I'm telling you.

Maybe in another post I'll give you the list of albums and/or artists that will never find a home on my stereo. (Europe, I'm looking in your direction....)

Don't Forget to Vote This Year

Not too hard to tell which party I will NOT be voting for.....EVER

Wacky Weather

Here's some data about our snowfall amounts up here in Orono, Maine from last month, December of 2007:
--42 inches of snow in our area

--that's 13x more snow than they had here the previous December, 2006 (3.6 inches)

--it was the most snow in a December since 1952

--it snowed 17 of the 31 days in December

Crazy, eh?

But wait, there's more.

Today, Tuesday, January 8, 2008 saw a new temperature record set up here. It got up to 55 degrees Farenheit (that's 12.8 degrees Celsius for my visitors from outside of the US) breaking the 61-year old record of 50 degrees Farenheit (10 Celsius) set back in 1946.

Here's how I see it: we're just clearing space for more snow because I gotta believe there'll be more coming our way before winter is over.

And I'm just fine with that. Because as you know: when life gives you snow, go sliding!

Talkin' Red Sox Baseball

For the past five years, WZON Sports Talk Radio (620AM) in Bangor, Maine has had the privilege of hosting a hot stove night with Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione. He brings with him Gordon Edes from the Boston Globe this year. It wasn't until I moved back here to Maine that I heard about this event, and of course have not ever attended since I was living 600 miles down I95 in Philadelphia.

This is a hot stove league event and the sports fans in my area apparently look forward to this event each year now that it has become an annual affair. This year it's taking place on Monday, January 21 at the Bangor Civic Center, which holds approximately 500 people.

Here's the catch: the only way to get tickets is to win them on WZON. There are no tickets for sale, you can only win them on the radio. Each hour during the day (from 6am - 9pm) they play a fancy jingle, and you have to be the 5th caller to win a pair of tickets. WZON started giving the tickets away on December 31st.

Well, TFKoP scored his pair of tickets on Wednesday morning of this past week. I was dialing in on my home phone, my work phone, and my cell. I just HAD to have a pair of these tickets. I was like Uncle Frank in One Crazy Summer! I love the Sox and can't wait to sit in and listen to Mr Castiglione's observations about the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. If nothing else, I'll at least get a free hot dog and soda! (I'm sure it will be a red hot dog!)

Nice "hot stove" effect in the picture, eh? I'm good...real good.

Now here's the cool part: WZON is saying that they still have a "special announcement" in reference to this year's hot stove night. As of this writing, they have not said what the announcement is.

You wanna know my guess as to the special announcement? I bet they have the World Series Trophy with them during the gathering. On stage with them, I bet. That would be awesome. And if that's the case and they let us line up for pictures with it you can expect to see that picture as soon as I get home that night after the event.

Regardless, here's what I do know for sure: I'VE GOT MY TICKETS ALREADY! Nice. Did you get yours?

Close up of the coveted WZON Hot Stove Night tickets. Ticket #49 and ticket #50. Suh-weeeeet!

Meditation Thought for the Day

When life gives you snow, make a snowman.

Happy New Year!

A wish for you all to have a safe and healthy 2008.

The "happy" part is up to you.

First sunrise of 2008 (Orono, ME)