More Hatorade for Harry Potter....

I'm thinking about buying this shirt.

QUIZZO team now taking applications...

Alright so for the first time in the year or so that we've been going to QUIZZO on Monday nights at the Kildare's in Media, we did not make the Quizzo Championship round. For those of you who don't know the specifics of Quizzo, a season of Quizzo consists of about 12 weeks. Each week, the first place team receives 3 points in the standings (and a $50 Kildares Gift Card), second receives 2 points (and a $25 gift card), and third receives 1 point (and a $10 gift card). At the end of the season, the three teams with the most points go on to the championship round, where the winning team will receive $150 cash, second $100, and third $50. For the previous three seasons that we competed in, we won the Championship our first season, and then had two disappointing third place finishes the following two seasons. This season that just ended yesterday, basically everyone previously on the team decided not to show up anymore so all of the parts of our once well-oiled machine weren't fully functioning. So I'm sending out an open invitation to everyone to join the team. If you've got a lot of random / pop culture knowledge, we'd love to have you aboard. The next season should be starting up in the next couple of weeks. The more people we have the better. So let me know if you want in and I can give you all of the details.

THE POLICE... in concert

One of the benefits of working for a radio station, is being able to get paid to attend concerts. So on Thursday, MGK broadcast live right outside of Citizen's Bank Park for The Police's 30th Anniversary Reunion Tour and I was working.

This event initially looked to be a disaster because we were told by the Citizen's Bank Park people that only our DJ was allowed inside of the stadium and we were to go no where near inside, thus preventing us from watching the show. Luckily, since we were right by the entrance to the stadium, anyone who was unable to sell their extra tickets in the parking lot were just dropping off the extra tickets at our tent for our own personal use. So by the time that the concert was about to start, we accumulated about 10-15 tickets between ourselves and our co-workers at the MMRmy.

So with these extra tickets, I was able to watch about 45 minutes of The Police's set and musically, it was pretty amazing. Obviously, I now have the bragging rights to say that I've seen The Police in concert, but what's even more awesome is the fact that Sting, Andy Summers, & Stewart Copeland are all talented musicians and they know how to put on a good show.

The only problem I had with the show was the fact that it was in a stadium and the stage was out in deep centerfield. So it was pretty difficult to even see them on stage. And what made matters worse, was that the sound was not matching up with the video on the screen. There was about a 2-3 second delay and its the minor things in life that always bother me so that was definitely getting to me. But just being able to experience their music live was pretty awesome. I'm definitely planning on working their next concert when they return to the Wachovia Center (a better place to see a show than the Cit) on November 14th.

Oh and I can't forget that myself, Adam, and Lauren raided Goodwill for Police uniforms to wear in celebration of the concert. And I definitely got my picture taken with Sting and some nice pretty ladies.

FALLOUT - The Day After a Heavy Night of Drinking

So I'm looking at my DRUNKEN RECALL that I posted last night and I don't even remember writing it... which makes me feel like a complete asshole because I drove myself home that night, putting everyone out on the road in danger, as well as Lori's sister who was in the car. So first off I will apologize for being a complete moron but let it be known that I paid the consequences this morning. I woke up around 10AM with a wicked hangover, that whole drained feeling and a false sense of hunger. So I decided to grab a glass of water and a granola bar. Let's just say that a granola bar tastes a lot better going down than coming up. I didn't even get halfway through the bar before I was yacking in my trashcan. After that I tried to go back to sleep but I was blessed with a nice case of the dry-heaves and it also didn't help that I had third degree sunburn from working outside Saturday without any sunscreen. Another incident I was unable to report in my previous post was the fact that I decided to do a ripchord shirtless with Lori's sister. I managed to get most of the beer all over my chest and down my pants, creating what looked to be a pee spot. And let's just say that chest hair retains the smell of beer so that definitely contributed to the dry-heaves as I was trying not to think about beer. So I was finally able to fall back asleep and I slept off the rest of the dry-heaves until about 1:30. And for the rest of the day, I felt like complete shit and that continues to be the trend, now at 11 o'clock at night.

FUCK HARRY POTTER...

And fuck everyone who are spending their weekend reading that goddamn book. I saw more than one person's away message mentioning that they're "still reading" and shit like that and my mom keeps giving me updates on how many more pages she has left. I've never read any of those books or seen any of the movies and I feel like I've accomplished something by not wasting my time on that shit

DRUNKEN RECALL...

That's right I'm not calling it DRUNKEN OBSERVATIONS tonight because I didn't observe it as much as I experienced it / recalled it. So first off, Lori Armbruster and the Armbruster family can throw an awesome block party. There was plenty of beer, and when I showed up there was a good amount of flip cup going on. Highlight of my night (good or bad) would have been when Durgen threw up after having finished 7 cups by himself to beat myself and Pat Ryan. Keep in mind that me and Pat were the DREAM TEAM!! So Durgan disqualified himself by throwing up all over the table as well as me and Pat. BEAT!! So after Lori's successful block party, we headed to Guaro's AKA Matthew's over in Norwood. After demolishing Pat in pool, we enjoyed ourselves at the bar and the music that was played via Steph. After Eileen Keever left, leaving me with the couples, it became obvious that I was the odd man out and I needed to head out and do my own thing. Keep in mind that Eileen left without sayng anything to anybody. So I ended up leaving, getting the hiccups, getting rid of the hiccups by holding my breath and closing my eyes, and realizing that Loris' sister Gina needed a ride home. Let's just say she's lucky that I don't drive with my eyes closed. So I safely drove her home and now I'm left pondering myself as I'm sitting here at my computer.... Why did I waste my time writing out this blog... What a fuck head I am...

CENSORSHIP IN AMERICA

I was just watching the music video for Eve's "Tambourine" and they actually blurred out her hand when she made it look like a gun as she said, "stick 'em up". What the fuck?! We can't even make our hands look like guns now on TV. I'm tired of this fucking fascist bullshit where you've always got the FCC aka Big Brother watching every little move that everyone makes on TV and fining stations for the littlest of questionable material. But making your hand look like a gun? Little kids have been doing that for as long as guns have existed. And no I don't think they saw it on MTV back in the 1800's when kids were doing it then too. This fucking Conservative Right bullshit is really starting to get to me...

EWE TOO ROCKS ME's second show... CRASH & BURN

So the second EWE TOO ROCKS ME show was a complete disaster and actually saw this coming. We were playing a party at our drummer Gooch's friend's house. As soon as we pulled up and started unloading, we noticed that the backyard straight up smelled like shit and our staging area was pretty cramped with a door into the house directly behind us (which everyone in the audience continued to use even as we were playing). We didn't know anyone in the crowd except for our friends Adam, Gill, and his girlfriend and the rest of the crowd consisted of douche bags who probably pop their collars on a regular basis. So we were in hostile grounds and our stage show / presence does not accomodate that very well.

Of course when we went on stage, nobody got our wardrobe or sense of humor so those everyone just went about their own ways playing the card game, Asshole and also a fucking game of Flip-Cup broke out on the folding table that we had brought for our stuff. Also working against us was the fact that we didn't go on stage until about 7:30PM so time was working against us as darkness approached and the neighbors waited by anxiously for the time to call the cops on us. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the first half of our set was painful because out of the 20 or so people that were there, we were really only playing to about 5 of them tops. Everyone else could give two shits about whether we were there and we even heard someone say that it sounded better when we weren't playing. So we took mid-show break and then this drunk old guy comes up and wants to jam with us and then he, Rhys, and Gooch proceed to jam a little bit and now it was completely dark.

We were finally able to get the old guy off the stage and we jumped into a pretty good version of Stranglehold. As the song began to take a hold of us, someone in the crowd informs us that the cops are here and we need to stop. So the girl who threw the party talks with the cop, and apparently the compromise is if we lower the volume, then we can keep playing. We then attempt to play Summer of '69 at a lower volume and with it completely dark, making it impossible to read any of the lyrics to the song. HORRIBLE.

Now this girl's younger brother starts getting pissy and wants us to stop playing because he's got some underagers at this party drinking and he doesn't want the cops coming back because he thinks they'll get busted. So the brother and sister duo then begin yelling at each other and that's when we decided to call it a night, 2 songs into the second half of our show. As we start to pack everything up and start loading out, the old guy comes back on stage, grabs Joe's guitar and proceeds to play what seemed like a half hour set of something that barely resembled music. All of this going on while we're packing up i n pitch black darkness because there are no lights in the backyard. A perfect ending to a crappy night.

What smarts even more about this is the fact that I cancelled a possible trip up to see Dusty in NYC this weekend. What a fucking waste.

And finally I'd like to make a rebuttal about a statement I made previously about Marty. It worked out that he had his bbq the night of the show because it was a positive ending to a sucky night. Mad props on an entertaining bbq.

DRUNKEN OBSERVATIONS...

alright so we spent a night at marty magee's with steph schramm's sister as the guest bartender. I spent most of the night writing notes on my hand so I'm going to try to comprehend what I have written down.

- Previously, Coz and I had a conversation about a future feature piece on the blog about things you shouldn't do in real life. FIRST on the agenda: DON'T GO OUT ON A BOUGHT WITH A DRUG DEALER THAT YOU OWE MONEY TO.

- From what I can comprehend, apparently, I face-grinded Steph Schramm... HO-HAH!!

- Eileen Keever left early from the bar venture because she had to feed some dogs or something that she was dog-sitting... WHATEVER....

-And I got NOSE RAPED by Eileen as well... I'm pretty sure she blew out my ear drums and cleared out my sinuses

Alright that's all that was written on my hand. Stay in School and Don't do drugs.... from Gruff McGruff

PS. Marty is a punk for having a bbq the weekend of a EWE TOO ROCKS ME show

JIMI HENDRIX = GUITAR GOD

There's been an ongoing debate between myself and Finnegan over who was the greatest guitarist of all time. I've said all along that it was Hendrix but, Finnegan swears by Clapton. While I do respect Clapton and rank him among the best of all time, Hendrix, hands down is the greatest of all time. I was reminded of this today as I was watching Jimi's performance at the Monterrey Pop Festival. Simply breath-taking...

Sports Wrap... TAKE TWO

Now that I've gotten all of that basketball talk out of the way, we get to the good stuff: HOCKEY! I was getting exciting as the beginning of free agency loomed on July 1st and it certainly did not disappoint.

Having already completed a trade with Nashville for the rights to sign Kimmo Timonen, a number one defenseman, and Scott Hartnell, Paul Holmgren continued to work his magic by signing Daniel Briere. While it's pretty obvious that the Flyers definitely overpaid Briere, he should be a key acquisition for the Flyers. Pencil him in as the center of the Flyers top line with Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble and you've got a pretty potent #1 scoring line.

And as if signing Briere wasn't enough, Holmgren pulls the trigger on a trade, sending Joni Pitkanen and Geoff Sanderson to the Oilers for Joffrey Lupel and defenseman Jason Smith. Pure genius.

So with all of this revamping of the Flyers, they have now added three former Captains and a lot of young talent can blossom into some really special players. Dare I say that they are a playoff team now? I'm going to go out on a limb and say if everyone stays healthy and some of the young guys like Jeff Carter and Mike Richards step up, then indeed the Flyers will be a playoff team and definitely a force to be reckoned with.

While everything seems to be looking up for the Flyers, a shadow was cast over Philadelphia with the Rangers signing both Scott Gomez and Chris Drury to lucrative deals. The Rangers now have at least two elite scoring lines and a goalie who can be lights out frequently and who is only starting to hit his prime. The question that lingers for the Rangers regards their depth and also their blue liners. But I think that they can dominate with just the two scoring lines if need be.

The Penguins are also a scary good team that the Flyers will have to face eight times next season. They weren't big suitors in free agency, but they didn't necessarily need to be. They've got a great core of young players who are only going to get better and of course there's always that bastard Sidney Crosby. The Penguins weak link will continue to be Mark-Andre Fleury who tends to be inconsistent.

As for the other two teams in the division, the Devils and the Islanders, stick a fork in both of them because they're done; the Islanders more so than the Devils. That's right I'm saying it. The Devils have already lost Brian Rafalski and Scott Gomez to free agency. So unless the Devils pull off some kind of blockbuster trade, they will not be making the playoffs this year. Of course Brodeur will continue to keep them in a lot of games and they'll continue to have a stingy defense, but I don't think they have enough scoring for when Brodeur is off. So like I said, they'll compete but they will not be making the playoffs this year.

I'm thinking I might even do an abbreviated season preview right around when the season starts. Should be interesting.

Sports Wrap... TAKE ONE

Alright so I was pretty busy this whole weekend otherwise I would have posted this sooner. I was a big fan of watching the NBA draft this year because A) there were so many good players in the draft and B) the Sixers had three first round picks so there was a possibility they were going to be creating some fireworks via a trade.


"With the 12th pick, the Philadelphia 76ers select Thaddeus Young from the University of Georgia Tech..."

Alright so the Sixers surprised everyone by selecting Young, a freshman out of GA Tech who seemed off of the Sixers' draft radar towards the end there. I really thought they were going to select Al Thorton who seemed more NBA ready but apparently Young has a major upside. Of course I also remember a number of years ago when the Sixers randomly selected another underclassmen with major upside, Larry Hughes and we all know how that turned out. So I'm a little sceptical about how he is going to turn out and I'm also a little curious about the pick because he seems to be a clone of Andre Igoudala. Could they possibly be looking at not resigning Igoudala after this year with one year left on his rookie contract?

I was driving home from work listening to draft coverage of SportsRadio 950 when I heard the Sixers next pick, Daequen Cook and I started flipping out because at that point they had drafted two guys that were going to need a lot of work before they were NBA-ready. However shortly after that pick, it was announced that they had traded Cook to Miami for 7'0 center Jason Smith out of Colorado State. I thought this was a great pick because he's athletic, he can shoot the ball, and he can rebound, but I'm a little wary of it because he went to a small school and the competition might not have been that great. So what I play favorites with the big name schools.

After what seemed like twenty trades, with their final two picks, Sixers ended up with 6'7 swingman Derrick Byars out of Vanderbilt and 6'10 forward Herbert Hill. Byars was a scorer at Vanderbilt so I think he could possibly pan out as a shoot guard and Hill seems to be a prototypical big man project, who can rebound and block shots, but who also may not even make the team. I think the Sixers should have used one of their second round picks on a foreign player that they could keep overseas for a couple of years and let develop. They originally drafted two different foreign players but traded both of them for Byars and Hill.

So overall it seems that the Sixers have drafted a lot of players with upside. So who knows how it will pan out. All we do know is that Billy King was drafting for the future and not for this upcoming season. So it could be another long season.