John’s Crawlspace

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently had some audio equipment (new amp and head unit) installed in my car at Tweeter. I thought I’d be better off by avoiding Best Buy, and the guys at Tweeter seemed to know what they were doing. I also figured “you get what you pay for”, and that was how I justified dropping $300 on the head unit/amp installation. When I went to pick up my car, the guys who installed it weren’t there (they assured me they would be) and there was no one there who could show me what was done to my car, or how to use the equipment they installed. Sure, I’m not an idiot and I can figure it out on my own, but that’s not the point. They did an absolutely piss-poor job installing the amp. It looked like they used a battering ram to get the amp under the passengers seat. The amp itself is all kinds of scratched up - completely mangled. When I get a new car, I will never be able to sell this thing, it looked like someone took a chisel and a hammer and just went nuts. It may only be “cosmetic damage”, but it’s completely unacceptable. There were shards of metal all over the floor in the back of my car, and I cut my finger open when I was checking out what they did. The amp was loose under the seat - people riding in the back could easily knock it around with their feet. Also, the way they lodged it under the seat made it almost impossible to move the passenger seat back and forth. When you do, you’re smashing the amp even worse.

The place where I had it installed is a good 45 minutes from where I live, so dropping my car off there after work and then getting a ride home was a pain in the ass to begin with. I decided to stop by again after work last week, and by some stroke of luck the manager happened to be there. I showed him the half-assed job that they did on the installation, and he acted a little surprised. He checked his schedule, and told me to drop my car off the following Monday (which was this past Monday). He assured me everything would be taken care of, and that the amp would be replaced. I left feeling a little better about the whole situation.

On Monday around 5:30 pm, a guy from Tweeter called me and told me the car was all finished. They close at 7 on weeknights, and I wouldn’t be able to get there until around 8, so I had him leave my key outside. So once again, no one was there for me to talk to about what was done to my car. It turns out that they didn’t replace the amp after all, they just moved it into the trunk… Which is what they should have done in the first place.

Obviously I wouldn’t recommend going to Tweeter (or Best Buy) for any type of product installation (or really anything at all, for that matter) but in this case I really don’t know a good alternative. I feel like you’d be just as likely to get screwed over by some small car audio place. So I’m not sure what the moral of this story is. All I know is that I’m gonna spend all weekend re-lacing my shoes… It’s gonna be so sweet.

I heard rumors that Sacha Baron Cohen would be creating a movie (in the same style as Borat) about his character Bruno. I think that of his 3 characters, Bruno is the funniest one, so when I found out that it was actually happening, I was pretty excited. People are already getting offended, too - Look.

I don’t know if any of you like Girl Talk, but the dude definitely does the best “mashups” I’ve ever heard. Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) has 3 albums out, but the only one I’ve really enjoyed was “Night Ripper“. His new album (”Feed The Animals“) just came out, and he’s following in Radiohead’s footsteps by allowing listeners to name their price… Or you can download it for free. I didn’t pay for Radiohead’s In Rainbows, but for whatever reason I felt compelled to pay for this album, even though I haven’t heard it yet. Anyway, you can download it here. The only problem I see with this music is kind of a strange one: I’ll be playing it in my car, sitting in traffic or whatever, and all of a sudden a Britney Spears sample will come on. Slowly turn the volume down and put the windows up, and pretend it never happened. I can’t stand 99% of the stuff on the radio today, and 99% of his samples come from mainstream radio - I guess it’s all in the presentation? It’s a lot of fun to listen to his music and pick out the samples. Anyway, speaking of Radiohead…

Gene Simmons (of KISS) recently ragged on Radiohead for giving away their album “In Rainbows” for free. He said The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilised. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.” I think that is pretty hilarious - He’s waiting for the record industry to “get better”, at which point KISS will start recording again. I hope he’s not holding his breath… Actually, I couldn’t care less; I was never that big of a KISS fan anyway.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… Soulja Boy is complete and utter garbage. This shit is pushing the boundaries of what can be considered music. I’m glad someone called him out on it, too.

20 Jobs Too Awesome To Exist - This article will remind you that your job sucks. I wouldn’t mind delivering pizzas on a killer whale, and raptor rodeo looks fun too.

This is the best news headline I’ve seen in a while: “Zombie Caterpillars Controlled By Voodoo Wasps“. That is some weird stuff, too.

A real-life Jurassic Park? That sounds like an awesome idea! Definitely an interesting article.

I was thinking about making a submission to faceyourpockets.com, but I doubt they’d post it - It would just be my face next to a bunch of crack rocks and pocket lint. Oh well.

I love looking at old photos - They provide a link to the past like no other, and there is just something about them that is endlessly interesting to me. That’s about as deep as I’m gonna get here, but these old black and white photos of New York are pretty awesome.

Looking for MP3s from this year’s Bonnaroo? There’s a bunch of them here. Oh yeah, and some video can be found here.

After work, I’m going to meet up with some friends, and we’re heading to see Pearl Jam. These plans kinda came out of nowhere, I had different plans up until about 2 hours ago, but I’ve never seen Pearl Jam before, so that should be cool. Tomorrow is Popped! Music Festival at Drexel University in Philly, so that should be cool. Anyway, that’s all for now, have a great weekend everyone.

I recently got 2 new sets of speakers (Infinity Reference 9623i), an amp (MRP-F250), and a head unit (KDC-X492) put into my car. I also got my doors taken off, and had disappearing doors installed. That last part might be a lie though. Anyway, the head unit is pretty cool - You can plug your iPod into it directly via USB, and browse through all of your music right on the screen. So maybe that will help me stay on the road a little bit better. Anyway, I had it on shuffle this morning on the way to work, and Metallica came on. After a minute or so, it dawned on me that they will be playing at Bonnaroo at some point this weekend. I know its lame, but I’m pretty bummed about the fact that I’m not there this year. I’ve only been to Bonnaroo for the past two years, but I had so much fun both times, and I remember talking to the people that I went with about “not seeing any reason to stop going to Bonnaroo every year from now on”. But it just didn’t happen this year. Initally, when I saw that Metallica was on the lineup (with the likes of Kanye West and other unlikely candidates) it was a no-brainer - Bonnaroo is just “too commercial” now, and I’d be better off spending my money elsewhere. But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that with most of the festivals that I’ve gone to, I haven’t been there because of the headliners anyway. I’ve liked a lot of Metallica’s music for as long as I can remember - Before I even really got into metal. And while they themselves may be some of the biggest tools on the planet (and the douche factor is consistent), I still wouldn’t mind seeing them. Bonnaroo may not be the best place for them, but Mastodon and The Sword are there this year too. I think it’s safe to say that both of those bands are more “aggressive” than Metallica, but seeing them on the lineup really made me want to go. Anyway, I guess there are two schools of thought on Metallica at Bonnaroo - My initial reaction, which was that they don’t belong there at all, and could potentially “ruin” Bonnaroo… Or that the festival has evolved, and it’s all about diversity. I realize this wasn’t a very well thought out rant (or whatever you wanna call it), but I do wish I was there this year, and I’m sure that 60,000 or so odd people are having a blast right now in Manchester, Tennessee. Oh well, I’ll be in Michigan for Rothbury before I know it, and I’m sure I’ll have just as much fun there. I bet this dude is glad he decided to make the trip to Bonnaroo, though… I bet he’s having a great time right now.

Oh yeah, you can watch Bonnaroo coverage live here - I just caught some of Les Claypool’s set and they were doing a cover of Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral”, it was pretty bad ass.

Lately, I’ve been writing my posts little by little, and saving them on my jumpdrive. If someone sends me a link at work, I’ll throw it in a text file, and the post is usually done over the course of a week or so. My jumpdrive got effed up last week and I lost everything on it, so that kind of screwed things up for me. I ordered a new one on Tuesday (8 GB Kingston) for $30 and it came on yesterday, so now I’m “back in action”, so to speak. Plus, I can throw MP3s on this thing and then plug it right into my car’s head unit, which is pretty cool. I’m actually kind of obsessed with it right now. I’ve been sleeping my car, too. That’s not weird, is it?

I never play video games anymore, but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Metal Gear Solid 4. I really enjoyed the other Metal Gear games… Even when I did play video games once in a while, a game could rarely hold my attention for more than a few days, but I played these games a lot, and I actually played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 the whole way through. If #4 is as good as people are saying, it might be worth buying a PS3 for… But I doubt I will.

Last weekend, I ended up going to The Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier @ Penn’s Landing in the city. The last time I saw The Roots was at Langerado, and since half of the band was stuck in traffic, the performance was a bit lacking, to say the least. Anyway, before I left, I saw a posting on a message board that some dude was looking for volunteers. I got in touch with him, and he said that if I ran the dunking booth for half an hour, he’d give me and my friends backstage passes. The guy told me to “come find him” when I got there, so I didn’t really count on it working out. Anyway, we got there around 2 or so and pregamed in the parking lot before heading in, since we anticipated the usual $8 beers. After wandering around for a little, I found the dunk tank, and before I knew it, I had tracked down the dude who I talked to earlier. He gave me a George Bush mask and 4 backstage passes. It was ridiculously hot out (hottest day of the year so far?) so I had no problem doing the dunk tank thing. Basically I sat there and drank beer (that we managed to sneak in) while wearing a Bush mask and giving people the finger as they attended to dunk me into the cold, refreshing water. I had a great time with it. We all took turns doing this, and then we decided to head backstage. Being backstage was pretty damn cool - Free food and beer, and all the bands were back there hanging out. When The Roots came on (they played several sets, in between the other bands) we headed out onto the stage. It was pretty damn cool to watch the band from the side of the stage (under shade) while everyone else was all crammed together, standing in direct sunlight. Unfortunately, the sound is setup so that it sounds best when you are in the audience, not when you are standing behind the band, so sometimes it was hard to tell what songs the bands were playing. Most of the time, I heard more bass than anything else. I got some great pictures though - I got one with ?uestlove, and Satomi Matsuzaki, the short little Japanese chick from Deerhoof. I would have gotten more, but to be honest, there were so many eccentrically dressed people backstage, I couldn’t tell who was who. Anyway, The Roots put on an awesome show. Gnarls Barkley started around 10, but my friends wanted to leave, so I only caught 2 or 3 songs; but they sounded pretty good. Anyway, it was a pretty good time, albiet a little bit exhausting. And going to the Manayunk bike races the following morning didn’t help things much, I’ve been recovering all week.

I don’t know what you guys have planned for the weekend, but I’m staying in my room and dancing to this song… All weekend long. It’s gonna be a good weekend.