John’s Crawlspace

I spent the last few days in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with my girlfriend and her family. This was the first time I’d been to the beach so far this Summer, so naturally the weather was crappy pretty much the whole time. On Thursday we decided to drive to Boston just for the hell of it, we figured we’d spend the day there shopping or whatever. We probably would have been better off if we had taken a map with us or something, since we couldn’t find anything, and spent most of the day sitting in traffic in the city. We finally found an area that looked nice, and managed to find a place to park… For $10 an hour. So all in all I wasn’t thrilled with Boston, but I’m sure there’s lots of stuff to see/things to do there, we just didn’t plan it right. I gotta say that I was amazed by the number of liquor stores in Cape Cod - I saw one literally every five minutes, it was ridiculous. We also spent a day in the “gay Mecca” of Provincetown, which was interesting, to say the least. I’ve never seen so many ads for drag queen balls, “bear” conventions, and… Well, you get the idea. Anyway, that’s enough about what I’ve been up to.

I don’t know if this is actually that great of a deal or not, but I’m throwing it out there anyway… HCDItrading.com has a 15″ wall-mountable LCD screen for only $49.95. I have a 17″ and I think it was around $300 when I got it, so this seems like a steal to me. Anyway, you can grab one here while they last.

So I missed Down’s live performance/webcast last Saturday… That sucks. I haven’t really had a chance to look around, but maybe someone had a chance to capture the stream make a video copy of it available… That’d be nice. Down is amazing live.

What is Scambaiting? “Well, put simply, you enter into a dialogue with scammers, simply to waste their precious time and resources. Whilst you are doing this, you will be helping to keep the scammers away from real potential victims and screwing around with the minds of deserving thieves.” 419 Eater is an awesome site I found tonight that archives the correspondence between scammers, and the people who are scamming the scammers. Some of the stuff on this page is hilarious, albeit a bit lengthy. In this series of emails, a scammer is tricked into getting a permanent tattoo that says “Baited by Shiver” - It’s a pretty long read but well worth it. Check out some of the other letters on this site.

Have a lot of friends on MySpace? Over 20,000? Why not cash in? Wow, that is ridiculous…

There are some fetishes out there that I just don’t understand…

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this program, but it’s pretty cool. It’s called AndreaMosaic, and it allows you to “create your own photographic mosaics made with your own pictures”. You know what I’m talking about… Pictures like this one. It’s freeware, too!

Check out the worst theme park ever! Kind of reminds me of a defunct amusement park - I’d love to visit some of those places with a couple rolls of film and spend the day taking pictures.

I don’t know how many of you remember the show “Strangers With Candy” - The main character, Jerri Blank, is a 46 year old who returns to high school after being a druggy and a whore. Apparently, her character was based on Florrie Fisher, a motivational speaker who traveled from school to school speaking about her past as a junkie and a hooker. Anyway, even if you’ve never seen the show, this link (especially the videos) is worth checking out.

So how about some free stuff? Safegaurd de-wormer for dogs. I hope these work on people too… Speaking of diglets, you can get a free dog pedometer here. Get free movie tickets from Johnnie Walker here. Free “CANdom” here. Free… Rosaries? Get ‘em here.

That’s all for now. I’m going home for a few days, apparently I’m going kayaking here with my family tomorrow, that should be interesting.

After the amazing time I had at Bonnaroo, I’ve been looking into other music festivals that are going on this Summer, and although the likelihood of me actually getting to another one is pretty, well, unlikely (due to both financial reasons and locations), I thought I’d post some of what I found on here.

I had never heard of the Street Scene festival until today, but the lineup here is also pretty amazing… Tool, Wu-Tang, Social Distortion, QOTSA, AFI, Bad Religion, The Shins, Bloc Party, Slightly Stoopid, Tricky… You can check out the rest of the lineup here. As much as I’d love to make it to this festival, it’s in San Diego, which is quite a drive from here. But those of you who are closer should definitely check it out if you can.

Most of us have probably heard of Lollapalooza before, but I was surprised by this year’s lineup, which includes: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, Wilco, Death Cab, Coheed & Cambria, The Flaming Lips, Ween, QOTSA, The Shins, Matisyahu, Gnarls Barkley, Sonic Youth, Violent Femmes, Blues Traveler, Panic! At The Disco, Cursive, Sparta, and tons more (130 bands). That lineup is pretty amazing. Chicago is roughly ten hours from here, so I don’t know how likely it is that I’d make it there, but I’d sure like to.

Another fest I’ve been hearing alot about over the past year or two is All Good, which is held in West Virginia. I know people that have gone to this one in past years and have had an amazing time. This year, the festival features acts such as The Black Crowes, Trey Anastasio & Mike Gordon, Ween, Robert Randolph, Les Claypool, Galactic, Xavier Rudd, The Disco Biscuits, and so many more. This is one I’d definitely like to make it to.

And like I said, there are tons more of these festivals all over the US. Some more I stumbled across… Hedgpeth Festival in Wisconsin, featuring bands such as The Flaming Lips, Primus, Peeping Tom, Minus The Bear, Slightly Stoopid, Anberlin, Murder By Death, They Might Be Giants, and Rusted Root. Gratefulfest 7 in Ohio, featuring Rusted Root, Hot Tuna, Dark Star Orchestra, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and a ton of other jam/hippie bands that I don’t know a thing about. Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, The park where Gratefulfest is held, features lots of other music events, check it out. Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago seems like it’d be worth checking out, they have performers such as Aesop Rock & Mr. Lif, Spoon, The Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, and Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. And we can’t forget about Soul Fest, featuring STRYPER!

The list doesn’t stop there… 10,000 Lakes, High Sierra Music Festival, Naperville Exchange Club’s Ribfest, A Bear’s Picnic (which is actually in PA!), All About the Music Festival, Bele Chere, Austin City Limits, Bumbershoot, and there are tons more… But it’s alot easier to just browse them yourself, check out Jambase.com where you can browse by region.

Some of you may be a little confused by my sudden interest in all this jam band hooplah, since I’d assume that those of you who have been visiting for awhile now would have gotten the impression that I’m mostly into metal. That’s still true for the most part, but I had such an amazing time at Bonnaroo, even without knowing half the bands I saw, that I’m dying to do it again. Ideally these festivals would be featuring artists whose music I know by heart, but that’s just not in the cards, and discovering new bands is always fun. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of strange that I’ve never been to an Ozzfest before… This year’s lineup has a few bands that interest me, namely Between the Buried and Me, System of a Down, A7X, BLS, Unearth, The Red Chord, and All That Remains. My main issue with this is that the majority of my friends can’t stand this kind of music, and I’m not going alone. I’d like to go to the Sounds of the Underground Tour this year too, they’ve got In Flames, The Black Dahlia Murder, Behemoth, Through the Eyes of the Dead, and Cannibal Corpse (ha ha ha). Killswitch Engage and Horse the Band are on the bill as well, but only for select dates, which is crap. Anyway, who’s coming with me?

While on the topic of metal… I never thought Down would be touring again. They’re one of my all-time favorite bands, so when I heard they’d be playing a show in New Orleans this Saturday, I was both excited and disappointed, since it’s awesome that they’re playing again, but there’s no way I could make it to New Orleans to see it. Those of you with no plans this Saturday (the 24th) can check out a live webcast of the show here. Unfortunately I’ll be working that night, hopefully someone can capture the feed or something… Poop.

Wow, this video reminds me of parties in Shippensburg… SHIPPENSBURG POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND NOW!!!

I don’t know if any of you are fans of Kool Keith/Dr. Octagon, but you can check out his new album here.

So yeah, this post ended up being much longer than I planned on when I sat down. I have stuff to do today before work, so that’s all for now.

We got back from Bonnaroo on Monday morning, but I had to work Monday night, and I’ve been too exhausted to post about it until now. Like I said before, this was my first music festival, but I ended up having an amazing time. Due to scheduling conflicts, I didn’t get to see every band that I had hoped to see, but I did catch a good number of them.

We left for Bonnaroo from PA around 11:00 Wednesday night. Around 1:00 AM, the van was shaking like crazy, so we decided to stop and see what was going on, and it turned out that one of the tires was all shredded up. We managed to get to the nearest truck stop (which was in West Virginia, I believe) and call Triple A. Alex’s van did have a spare, but we couldn’t find a manual, so we didn’t know how to remove it from underneath the van. Since Triple A was taking a long time to show up, some random trucker offered to help. He got underneath and started going crazy on the van, going back and forth between the van and his truck to get tools and etc. He did manage to remove the spare from underneath the van, and then the dude from Triple A finally showed up. When he looked underneath the van, he told us the guy had ripped the spare right off the underside of the van. He removed the shredded tire and attached the spare, but we couldn’t attach the shredded tire to the underside of the van because the guy tore it all up, so we had to somehow fit that tire into the already ridiculously packed van. He recommended that we use the spare for fifty miles at 55 MPH - But we ended up driving on it for about 6 hours, going at least 65 MPH - Until we found a garage that opened at 8 AM Thursday morning that had a compatible tire on-hand. Anyway, enough about that.

We arrived on Thursday around 1:00 PM (after going through the security and everything) and we found our spot and setup our tents. We were all pretty exhausted, so we hung out at the camp site and met some cool people. The first band didn’t even start until 5 PM, but we didn’t head to Centaroo (where all the main stuff goes on) until 9:00 PM to see Cat Empire, which was awesome. Afterwards we all kind of got split up, and I went and saw Patton Oswalt, who was awesome. We were all pretty exhausted from the ride down, so no one stayed up too late that night.

Friday morning the sun came blasting into our tents around 7:30 AM, and from that point on it was impossible to sleep (it was like that every morning). Pretty much everyone around us emerged from their tents by 8:30 AM or so for the same reason, and the screwdrivers and grilling began. I wanted to see Andrew Bird at 1 PM, so after some beer pong and exploring the enormous camping areas & Shakedown Street(s), we headed to Centaroo and caught part of Andrew Bird’s set. After some more exploring we headed over to the main stage (”What Stage”) to see Steel Pulse, who I had never heard before but enjoyed. After Steel Pulse, Oysterhead played. I had been waiting to see them, and they played an awesome set. For those of you who have never heard of them, Oysterhead is composed of Phish guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio, Primus bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, and The Police drummer Stewart Copeland. If you’re a fan of Phish or Primus, they’re definitely worth checking out. You can download a decent quality version of their Bonnaroo set here or here. After Oysterhead came Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. We had a good spot near the front for this (we kept our Oysterhead spot), but since Tom Petty was one of the biggest names at Bonnaroo, the majority of the people attending showed up to see him, so it was ridiculously packed. To give you an idea, roughly 80,000 people attended this year, and I’d say at least 75% of them came to see Petty. Alot of the people were pretty hammered, and some dude peed on the back of my leg, which was pretty sweet. Later that night, I caught part of My Morning Jacket’s set, but being out in the hot sun all day was exhausting, and I crashed around 1:30.

Saturday morning we were woken up by some people blasting reggae music at about 6:00 AM. We did the usual hanging out/walking around until around noon. I went and caught some of the Magic Number’s set, which was alright. After that we saw some of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Gomez before heading to see Beck at the main stage. Beck’s show was pretty good, although it seemed a little half-assed. Radiohead played at 8:30 and we decided to not even bother trying to get near the front, and instead opted to bring blankets and get a roomy spot near the back where we could be comfortable and still enjoy the music. Radiohead played a great set, and everyone enjoyed it. I’ve never seen so many glowsticks in my entire life. Saturday night was my favorite night at Bonnaroo. After Radiohead, we went back to the tent area and chilled for awhile, before coming back to Centaroo to see some of Dr. John & Dumpstaphunk. Then we headed over to “Superjam”. In the schedules, it wasn’t announced who would be playing, and it turned out that Trey and Mike Gordon from Phish played, along with some other people that I didn’t recognize. Superjam ended at 3:00 AM, and those of us that were still awake (tons and tons of people) headed over to “The Other Tent” to see Sasha’s late night set, which lasted until around 6:00 AM, at which point we headed back to our tents and attempted to sleep. I’m not really into techno/electronic stuff, but it was still fun, it was more or less a huge rave.

Sunday morning I woke up still exhausted from the night before, and caught some of The Street’s set (though I’m not a big fan), some of Matisyahu, all of Atmosphere’s set (which was awesome, even though he didn’t come out for an encore), and we saw some of Phil Lesh & Friends before we left. All in all, I had an amazing time, and I would love to go to another festival like this. What other ones are out there? Fill me in! You can check out some more Bonnaroo videos here.

Wow… It’s amazing how some people can create something cool out of pretty much nothing. Check out what some dude did using nothing but Photoshop 6.0 - Keep in mind that he started from scratch.

So I’m leaving for Bonnaroo tonight, and I’m pretty excited. For those of you who have never heard of Bonnaroo, it’s basically a three day music fest in Tennessee. This is my first year going, and having heard a lot of different hings about past festivals, I’m not entirely sure what to expect - I’m just hoping it’s nothing like this year’s Wakarusa festival. Police driving around on golf carts with night-vision goggles, spying on people at night? That’s pretty ridiculous. Bonnaroo is traditionally composed of artists that appeal to your typical “DMB” fan, so it’s not like I’m the biggest fan of every band on the lineup. Nonetheless I’m looking forward to seeing some awesome bands, including: Radiohead, Beck, Oysterhead, Atmosphere, Death Cab for Cutie, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, My Morning Jacket, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Common/Blackalicious, The Magic Numbers, Dungen, Dr. John, Matisyahu, Deadboy & the Elephantmen, moe, Elvis Costello, Damian Marley, and Blues Traveler. I’m sure there are a bunch of other decent bands here that I’ve never heard anything from, and hopefully I’ll somehow end up at some of their performances as well. In addition to music, there’s also a comedy tent, featuring acts such as Patton Oswalt, Lewis Black, and Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre. There are six of us driving from PA to TN in a minivan (it’s gonna be cramped), and according to mapquest, it’s roughly an 11 hour trip, but I’m sure that traffic going into Manchester will be pretty backed up, so I’m sure that will add to it as well. I’d really like to take my digital camera along to take pictures, but considering my track record with consumer electronics, it might not be the brightest idea. Anyway, if you plan on attending as well, look for me, I’ll be the one crip walking in the banana suit. For those of you not attending, have a great weekend, but just remember that I’ll be having more fun than you. Eat it.

I usually buy my DVDs from Deep Discount DVD - They have a great selection, free shipping, and usually have the lowest prices available. I’m sure many of you are already aware of the site, but I came across a promo code you can use at the checkout to get 20% off your purchase, which is pretty damn awesome. Enter the code ‘USATODAY‘ and get 20% off your order, excluding some new titles and other stuff.

That was all I was gonna post today, but there is a new Slayer single too, I’ve only heard it a couple times and it hasn’t really caught my ear, but I’ll post it anyway.

Take it! There are some trailer trash kids outside throwing M90s near my pool (yes, I’m in Ship right now) so I’m gonna go scare them away… With a machete. That’s all for now.

Alright nugs, as usual I didn’t post when I would have liked to, and I kept you waiting for the music. So here it is… I don’t know how I feel about the new Deftones single, but I like the Between the Buried and Me album. Enjoy!

I’ve been meaning to post, but this prompted me to throw something on here as soon as I found out - I don’t know how many of you are fans Between the Buried and Me, but I absolutely love this band. Lately I haven’t been listening to a whole lot of really “brutal” hardcore/metal stuff, but I can always listen to these guys, no matter what kind of mood I’m in. I’ve seen them live (at the Ottobar) and they put on an amazing show. Anyway, to the point - Their upcoming album made it onto the internet, and I spent half of this morning trying to get a copy. It’s not new material per se, it’s actually a bunch of covers, but I’m still worked up about it. I have two links for the album on sendspace, but the site is pretty slow, and times out alot. Anyway, if you want to try and grab a copy, go for it. The retail hits stores on June 13th on Victory Records. Here’s the tracklisting and the links… Good luck with that, I’ll post the album later on today when I have the whole thing.

Between the Buried and Me - The Anatomy Of

1. Metallica - Blackened
2. Motley Crue - Kickstart My Heart
3. Soundgarden - Day I Tried to Live
4. Queen - Bicycle Race
5. King Crimson - Three of a Perfect Pair
6. Pink Floyd - Us and Them
7. Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA
8. Earth Crisis - Forced March
9. Sepultura - Territory
10. Blind Melon - Change
11. Faith No More - Malpractice
12. Depeche Mode - Little 15
13. Pantera - Cemetary Gates
14. Counting Crows - Colorblind

I thought that this video was pretty interesting. It explains “the worlds most important 6 second drum loop” - A beat that has been sampled countless times spanning many genres of music - You’ll most likely recognize it.

I’m currently in the process of moving into my new house, as well as finding a job for the Summer… Or a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone want to buy a bag of Bob Saget’s toenail clippings? Straight from the set of Full House, just let me know. Oh yeah, and there’s a new Deftones single out too, I’ll post that later on today, along with the Between the Buried and Me album, on a server where you can actually get the files.