Huggins - thanks for the memories

While this story is still breaking, I thought I'd post something about it really quickly.

Unfortunately, with the West Virginia coaching job recently vacated by John Beilein (who, small bit of trivia, has a nephew who went to my high school), Bob Huggins has decided to leave Kansas State after one fairly successful season to go coach where he was born and attended college.

Here are four stories about it that have popped up within the past hour:

Huggins to replace Beilein
Bob Huggins Leaves Kansas State for West Virginia
Huggins to Coach West Virginia
Huggins leaving to coach alma mater

What a bummer. This is a real disappointing turn of events. I understand the fact that this was a sudden chance at his "dream job," to coach where he was born and raised. But, after all of the excitement and anticipation that was building about the program, with K-State coming into next season with the best recruiting class in college, having the rug pulled out from under all of us is such a downer. Who knows what will happen to all the recruits now? They obviously all came to Manhattan, Kansas because of Bob Huggins. K-State is not a Florida or Kentucky or Duke.

The program, it unfortunately seems, is now back to where it was just two years ago.

Yet, not everyone is in a bad mood about this whole situation.

squirrel solution

I can't say it isn't awful, but I haven't posted in ages, and I do love using the embed video function.

you may need to sit down for this

July 4, 2007: A new Die Hard movie is being released.
Live Free or Die Hard

And it looks ridiculous. Also, ridiculously awesome.


(Others are excited about the Transformers movie coming out on the same day, which also looks pretty cool.)

video blog?

It's easy, and probably more entertaining than long, drawn-out ramblings of mine, so I thought about turning this blog into a more video-based journal.

Now that I've mastered how to embed YouTube material (and trust me, it's a challenge), I can share videos with you that I find out about over the course of the week.

We'll see how it goes.



My favorite band, Ween, came out with a country album back in 1997. It was a new genre for them basically, though they are constantly "testing the waters," so to speak, of every other genre out there. Nonetheless, it was a bold move on Ween's part, only because, as I've read in several interviews, releasing an entire country album did two things. One, it alienated a lot of the casual Ween fans ("ugh, country? I hate country"), and two, piqued the interest of country fans while misleading them at the same time ("this is some decent country; let me check out some of their other stuff....oh my, this is not what I expected"). To be blunt, though, Ween didn't, and still doesn't, give a damn.

I personally enjoy the album a lot. You have to be in the right mood, but it's a kind of country I actually enjoy. (Twangy, but also bluesy -- very different than, say, the Faith Hills and George Straits of our day...I don't know how you classify those two types of country, but they're different in several ways).

Anyway, it gets me to the two videos I'm posting today. Ween brought in a number of legendary country musicians from Nashville, who they eventually dubbed the "Shit Creek Boys." The musicians included Bobby Ogdin (piano), Russ Hicks (steel guitar), and Charlie McCoy (harmonica).

Here's a video of Russ Hicks and another guy on guitar. Is this not one of the most badass instruments ever created? It looks extremely hard to play (but what do I know?), but these guys make it look simple. Also, I'm amused that there is such a thing as an International Steel Guitar Convention, and that it was in St. Louis, my hometown. (Darn, upon closer inspection, they only are allowing a link to YouTube, but no embedding of the video. Here's the link if you want to check it out.)

And here's a video of Charlie McCoy, who can play the mouth harp like no other:

best video of 2006?

To me, at least, this was the funniest video I had seen all year (though I'm sure I don't remember every video I saw all of last year, so we'll say within the last month or two of '06, to be truthful).

I also wanted to experiment with the "embed" function between YouTube and Blogger, so we'll see how it works.

Enjoy.


Special Christmas Gift

unfortunate hiatus

My lax attitude towards this blog saddens me.

That doesn't mean it will end anytime soon, though.

Don't miss me too much.

I'll be busy raking leaves, catching up on Onions I haven't read yet, and buying Christmas presents.

Have a happy December.
(Let's say I make writing in my blog a New Year's resolution.)

Tate Modern slides

I saw this article on Fark, a website I frequent that is usually a good source of current event news of all kinds. It's basically a site of links to other stories, and I swear I want to read two out of every three of the stories that are posted.

Anyway, some Belgian artist put a bunch of slides in the huge atrium at the Tate Modern in London. They look AWESOME.

I don't really care to get into the debate of whether they are art or not; I'm just saying they look and sound really fun.

anecdote from Dean Ween

I frequent the website of Ween, one of my favorite bands.

After a tour, Dean Ween, the guitarist, usually writes a tour diary. It's brief, but usually pretty funny and informative.

The reason I write today is because I found one of his entries to be frightening and interesting.

Here's the text to the diary entry, and then a link to the story he's referring to. It would be quite a trip if this happened to me; that's all I kept thinking.

"the new york state fair syracuse, ny
this gig was almost identical to the gig in allentown the night before. we played on the infield of a race track facing the grandstand both nights. this set was really good and brown and the best part was that we beat out the monsoon rains by only a few hours. i can't imagine what the fairgrounds must have been like for the days after our set. now i swear to god that this next part is true. if you follow the news at all, you'd know that there was a fugitive in upstate new york named ralph "bucky" phillips, wanted for shooting three state troopers and he was also an escapee from the erie prison. there was a massive manhunt underway for him right about the time we were up in that part of the state. i had only heard about the story and hadn't seen him on the news at this point. on our drive back to new hope from syracuse i fell asleep in the van and when i woke up we were off the interstate at this tiny little gas station with a shitty little diner. the other guys were inside using the bathroom and gettting food and i was the last one to wake up and get out of the truck. as i was walking across the gravel parking lot all groggy this dude was walking towards me and i remember thinking as i looked at his face "if i don't stare at the top of my sneakers right now, this motherfucker is gonna kill me on the spot." it scared the fucking shit out of me. to make a long story short, i got home, slept for a couple days, turned on the t.v. and lo and behold, there was the same dude from the parking lot. they captured him right after that, and no one believes my story, but it fucking happened just like i told it."

News story about Bucky Phillips: Not cut out for the straight life

this song rocks

Play it for the one you love.

The Margy Song

The Old Simpsons, vivariums, Elliott Smith, and Jerry Stiller

(Note: I've recently posted several new blog entries consecutively, so
be sure to catch all of them, because there are a few others below
this new one.)

After watching the past few weeks at 6:30, I realize nothing beats The
Simpsons. The newer episodes of the past few seasons don't stack up to
the episodes from back in the mid-90's. I swear; it's just good
comedy. It kicks the crap out of Family Guy, which has turned into
crap. All they do is try to be off-the-wall and offensive. And it
grows tiring. Family Guy had good stuff the first season or two. But
since then, it's stupid. Simpsons > Family Guy, is the simple equation
to remember. Futurama, by the Simpsons creator, is also really good.
Just my two cents on the matter.

A little definition for you to impress people with (good luck making
it contextual within the conversations you're engaging in, but that's
your problem): VIVARIUM: noun, a terrarium used for especially small
animals. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

My music recommendation of the moment is Elliott Smith. I squirm at
the fact that it took me so long to discover this guy. (Also, I'm
really good at discovering musicians after they've died in one way or
another, so I'll never be able to see them play live. See: Blind
Melon). It takes a few listens through each of his CDs, but damn, the
guy just writes a catchy song. And almost all of them just grow on you
and you love them more each time. I won't drill it into your brains,
but if you like solid pop songwriting (I guess that's the best way to
describe his music), check him out. Some consider it dark music, and
the lyrics are rather dark and depressing, but you don't always pick
up on it because the melodies are so well-written. He stabbed himself
in 2003, so perhaps that's a subtle indicator of his lyrical style.
(As a slight aside, his voice takes a little getting used to. As
Gretchen described it once, it can be whiny at points. But I told her
to give him another shot, after her initial disdain for the music. She
hasn't gotten back to me yet.)

My last point of the day and it's bold. I'd take Seinfeld over King of
Queens any day of the week, but in my opinion, Jerry Stiller's
character on King of Queens is much more amusing than his Seinfeld
character. In Seinfeld, he's pure rage (and that's funny for sure),
but the writing for his character in King of Queens is more than that.
Hard to describe, but if you watched a few, you'd know what I mean.