Get Inked

Can I talk about tattoos for a second? Yes, good!

Actually I want to talk about not getting tattooed...

My tattoo artist, Jason @ Tiki Tattoo, is an awesome dude. His work is stellar and he's about the cheapest tattoo artist you'll ever find. I've never paid more then $60 for a session. It's great stuff. The problem is Jason is busy. Really busy. I went in to book an appointment in January and he could fit me in in October. What? October. We've been working on the same piece for over a year now and I'd like some new ink. Not just to finish what we started but something new and fresh.

So I've been looking for a new place to get some work done. The problem is you can never get pricing online and it's hard to judge the work. I just assume that if the work is awesome then I'm going to be paying out the nose but if it's cheap and the work sucks... You can see the problem here.

I've thought about looking into seeing if I could get a Daniel Weyandt, of Zao, tattoo. The problem with Dan is he works in Greensburg, PA. It's a 4 hour trip for me. A little for a tattoo but to get inked by the vocalist from one of my favorite bands... Awesome!

I'd also like to get tattooed by Dave Quiggle of xDisciplex, N.I.V. fame. He does killer art and I'd love to have a real classic tattoo done by Dave. But again, he's in California. It would be an awesome trip...

I have ideas for what I want but the idea of working with another artist kind of sucks. But... I want a new tattoo and I need to rock one soon so it'll be all healed up when I go to Disney. I need to figure this out soon.

Hand of the Dead: Christian Metal or The Voice of Evil?

I have an itch to write today. Probably because it's a slow music week and there's no content going on with the music blog. So... Lucky readers?

The title of this post has nothing to do with what I'm writing. Well it does but not in a I'm going to defend or bash Christian metal and call out the people who think Christian rock is the Devil's way of taking over our lives. I'm above that.

No, this is a story of a mission’s trip and a 16 year old metal head and his youth leaders who just didn't get it.

Before my senior year of high school I went on a mission’s trip to New York with my youth group. We were spending the week at a work camp but that's not the point of the story.

So one of our leaders, knowing I was a music head, asked me to bring some music to play in the vans going up. I purposefully picked some tunes that would be more accessible to everyone going on the trip but I still made sure I had Living Sacrifice's The Hammering Process for myself.

So I managed to get into the van with all the luggage. Awesome. Only 6 of us in the van for the trip up to New York. Pretty awesome. We listened to a little music but not a whole lot. One of the girls in the van decided that we should listen to Plus One.

If you don't know about Plus One, congratulations. No seriously, you're lucky. Back in my high school days most Christian music was just a replacement for bands on the radio. Nothing original or creative. Just poor versions of what non-Christians were listening to. So Plus One was the Christian Backstreet Boys.

I was not a fan of this and after 45 minutes or so of awful boy bands music I reclaimed the cd player. I decided that if I had to sit through that then those girls were going to have to suffer through one Living Sacrifice song. I picked Hand of the Dead because it had some clean vocals in it.

The drum intro kicked in and our youth leader instantly turn the cd down thinking that a trash can had been dropped or something had gone wrong with the van. After explaining that it was just the song we turned it back up. And then the vocals started... The song was instantly turned off because Bruce Fitzhugh's growls sounded like Satan and there was no way that it could be Christian.

Needless to say I stopped trying to share metal with people I went to church with.

A funny story that came to mind and I thought I'd share with you.

Here's Hand of the Dead. You decide. Evil or awesome?

All Fall Down

So various members of the NCC Staff have been posting blogs about moments in life when they've fallen. Why, because when people fall down, it's funny.

And of course I decided I should join them. I mean, I fall all the time. I'm a tripping machine. It's like the sidewalk just grows to inches in my path to try and make sure that I find myself stumbling in public like an idiot. Just on Monday, my brother and me were walking when the sidealk attacked me.

Will Johnston Talks about falling off bikes and the dumb things done when a kid. I can relate. Between snowboarding (standing up on sleds, building ice ramps down narrow paths) and skateboarding I've experienced a ton of falling moments (and many bleeding moments) because of general being a boy and being dumb.

So what's a good falling story? I feel like ice has to be involved because ice is the catalyst for the best moments of falling. I know this year it took me a good 10 minutes to try and walk up hill on ice to get into work before I decided I would around to where the ice was not.

But this story does not involve ice. It involves coffee. Hot, very hot coffee. If you are unaware I drink a lot of coffee. I used to drink too much coffee. For all 8 hours of the work day I would consume coffee at the rate of about a cup an hour. Sometimes laziness was involved and I wouldn't make a pot of coffee, I'd just go over to Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, or the little bakery below our studio for a cup.

One morning before going into the office I went over to Dunkin Donuts for a bagel and coffee. Walked back over to our building and began the climb up the stairs to our office. Stairs are hard at 6:30 in the morning and I had yet to get that coffee into my tired body. I missed a step and fell backwards. The coffee cup was squeezed just a little too tightly and the top pop off sending my yummy Dunkin Donuts coffee into the air and all over me. A great way to start your morning. Not sure I laughed at myself that time...

Of course I had tripped on those stairs while carrying coffee many MANY times. Oh my.

Thanks to Will, Jennilee, Heather Zempel, and Maegan Stout for the inspiration.

Here is Grits with They All Fall Down.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I'm going to talk about baseball. Is that ok?

So I went to see my Atlanta Braves play the Washington Nationals yesterday and it was awesome. The Braves murder the Nats 11-2. Great game for me as a Braves fan. But even had the Braves lost, it would have been awesome. Because I was at a baseball game.

I tweeted yesterday that the combo of beer and hotdogs was the smell of baseball. It's funny but not untrue. Is there anything better then a hotdog at a baseball game? They smell and taste so much better then any hotdog I make at home. It's a great childhood memory, eating hotdogs at baseball games. Or as my dad would call them, Cal Dogs.

I guess I should explain that reference. The price of hotdogs being $4.50 or whatever they cost back when I was 7 made my father frustrated. Expensive ballpark food. Since the food went towards paying the players my dad would eat his hotdog for Cal Ripken and called it a Cal dog.

I didn't get a hotdog yesterday. I was hungry and didn't feel like wandering the ballpark or standing in a long line so I hot an Italian Sausage.

I love baseball. Not as much as hockey but probably more then football. I played baseball as a kid, although not for very long. I was a pretty awful baseball player. My dreams of playing left field in the MLB were crushed pretty early on. I tried. I played spring baseball, which was fun. I had one good hit that would have been a home run but I was so shocked that I had hit the ball that hard and far that I stood for too long watching the ball instead of running the bases. I tried out for a summer travel all-star type league but didn't make the cut. I played fall ball but it got too cold and when I got sick I quit.

I'm a much better fielder in my older age but I still can't hit. I played softball for two years and was a solid fielder but my batting is just awful. A painful reminder that I suck at baseball.

I collected baseball cards as a kid. I still have most of them. It's not a huge collection (unless my grandparents still have the trunk of cards I was given). Kids don't collect ball cards anymore do they? Their used to be specialty shops for kids like me. I'm pretty sure those don't exist either.

Another funny side story. I used to throw the baseball with my grandma when I was little. She used to tell me that she taught Cal Ripken how to pitch. I knew it was ridiculous back then, because Cal was obviously not a pitcher.

I loved going to games. Going with my dad to Camden Yards to see the Baltimore Orioles play. Going to Frederick to see their minor league team the Keys play (as it was said to me yesterday, before we knew better).

The question I get most asked is how I, being from Maryland, became a Braves fan. The story is simple. My dad didn't like the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. When Peter Angelos fired Johnny Oates after the 1994 season my dad wasn't happy and disowned the O's. SO at the age of 10 I also decided to jump ship.

The Braves' games used to be on TBS everyday. I watched their opening day game in 1995 and was a fan from that day on. It didn't hurt that the team won the World Series that year (it must have been because I was now a fan). A pretty simple story. When the Nationals came to DC in 2005 I had already had 10 years of being a Braves fan under my belt and wasn't going to jump ship for the team in DC.

And thus my completely random baseball blog.

Supersize Me

This post has nothing to with McDonalds or being fat.

I'm talking about the soon to be new Starbucks Trenta. I for one am excited about this. Why am excited about this much coffee? Because it's for the iced drinks and the iced drinks are half ice anyway.

I love the iced chai at Starbucks. It's amazing. Seriosuly, if you haven't had one go get one when it warms up. Killer stuff. But my beef is the ice to drink ratio sucks. I always get a Venti because any other size is not worth it. There's just too much damn ice in the drink.

Now of course I will be paying more for a drink that again will probably be half ice but there will be more chai and that's awesome. And that is why the Trenta is exciting to me.

Side note:

If anyone can drink 2 Trenta Frappucinos in a half hour without vomitting, I will give them $50. Let's set this up!

Super Sunday

So the Super Bowl has come and gone. Congrats to the Packers on making sure no one had to listen to their Steeler friends talk about how their team is the greatest. You made the world a better place.

The most important sporting event on Super Sunday was of course the Washington Capitals shutting out the Pittsburgh Penguins (rough day Steel Town). I missed the first period listened to the second on the radio, and got to watch the third and celebrate another Caps win.

My Super Bowl review is simple.

The national anthem was sad. Christina botched the lyrics and sounded like she's been smoking a pack a day.

The game was actually alright but I couldn't really get into it. I was excited when the Packers scored and indifferent to any success the Steelers had.

The commercials were mostly awful. Ok, not awful but boring. The VW Darth Vader kid commercial was funny but everything else was pretty forgetable.

The halftime show was bad for humankind. In 15 minutes the Black Eyed Peas made everyone person in America hate them. Dear NFl, If you have season next year, Mettalica is your halftime show.

I persoanlly let my inner fat kid go and ate a lot of food, most of which isn't good for me but I love pizza, nachos, and ice cream.

I think that's it.

Food Review - Pizza Hut's Big Dipper

I'm going to throw some food knowledge at you. Although I am skinny and most people thing I could stand to eat more, I do eat a lot. I love food. So why not put my food eating to use and help some people avoid making mistakes.

So Pizza Hut is offering the Big Dipper, 24 dipping slices of pizza. It's huge. You party all night with one...

Wrong! Let's start with the obvious, it's not pizza. It's really a cheese breadstick with pepperoni. The sauce is why they're dippers and not pizza. So fail right from the start. I take a huge bite and am instantly mad that this "pizza" has no sauce.

So let's get to sauce. It's pretty good. I mean, the marinara sauce at Pizza Hut is probably the best item they offer. So it's good. But the breadstick to sauce ratio is hard to get right. I either always had too much or too little. While I like the sauce, my attempts to have the big dipper taste like pizza was all in vain.

While at least there was a lot right? Yeah....No. Split between 4 of us, we each had 6 slices and each was hungry for more when we were done. The big dipper didn't offer the all night party lasting pizza as they promise on the commercial.

My advice, don't order this crap.