July 24,
2006
I hope you like cream soda...
On Saturday a large package
arrived from Jones Soda. Kari and I excitedly ripped it
open, sending the green packing popcorn cascading down like a
styrofoam waterfall. A corner of the black frame emerged and
we greedily pulled it out. Our Major Award had arrived.
Ok, so it doesn't look so much
like a Major Award, but damn, it sure was exciting seeing a
picture I had taken on a label for millions of bottles of...cream
soda? I think I actually
spent more time looking at 'Soda Mousse' and thinking "Is that the
right French translation for 'Cream Soda'? For some reason
it doesn't look right." I haven't had cream soda since I was
a kid, and I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Either way,
it's still wicked cool.
What I'm listening to right now:
Guster -
One Man
Wrecking Machine
July 23,
2006
First off, a picture of Baxter
wearing his jacket...
Click on the picture and then
view it in the larger size. His left eye is a neat half
brown, half bright blue.
Yesterday I went to see Clerks 2.
I had been excited about this movie since I first heard of it
months ago and have practically been counting down the days to
when it was due out. We went to the new movie theater called
Rave (*oomp-cha, oomp-cha, oomp-cha* <-- that's what rave music
sounds like), and Kari went to see The Devil Wears Prada while I
went to Clerks 2.
Unfortunatly, her movie started
45 minutes before mine, so I ended up standing in front of the
theater staring at a poster for the new Woody Allen movie, Scoop,
while the kids who worked there cleaned up the theater from the
last movie. When they were done I went in and up to the top
row (love that stadium seating), pulled out my
Moleskine
notebook and started writing some ideas for my book.
A few minutes later a guy comes
into the theater and sits about eight or nine rows in front of me
in the middle. Whatever. About three minutes later
another guy comes in wearing a long, black trench coat, an AC/DC
hat on backwards, from which his two foot-long black pony tail
dripped down, a scruffy goatee which tried unsuccessfully to hide
his chubby-cheaked, perma-glower, stood at the bottom row and said
loudly, "What? Only three people? Kevin Smith must not
be making a lot of money off of this movie." He then went to
the middle and sat down next to the other guy who had come in
before him, and handed him a giant tub of popcorn.
Not 30-seconds later the annoying
guy (who looked and sounded a lot like the
Comic Book
Guy from The Simpsons) turned to look at me and said,
"Soooo...are you a Kevin Smith fan?"
I lowered my notebook, "Uh, I
guess. I mean, I've seen most of his movies."
With a slightly nodding smug face
that both silently judged and dismissed me as a know-nothing
novice, he replied, "I own
all of his movies."
I wanted so bad to stand up, say
"May I clap for you?" and give a nice slow
golf clap.
But instead I gave a shrug of indifference and went back to
writing.
The movie itself was a stunning
disappointment. Most of the reviews I've read said how funny
it was, and that it was one of the best movies of the year, and
all of that. Now, I have nothing at all against raunchy talk
and there is almost nothing that offends me, but I felt this movie
was raunchy just for the sake of being raunchy. I found very
little of it to be actually funny, and the movie didn't flow well.
I like most of his other movies a lot (haven't seen Jersey Girl
yet). I hate to say it, but apart from a few good moments,
this was a pretty bad movie.
Tonight we loaded our bikes into
my car and headed down to the local bike trail. It's a
four-mile walking/bike trail that wanders through the woods.
It was a really nice night with low temperatures (mid-80's -
that's low for here), and the setting sun made it a great scene as
the light filtered low through the trees.
The only weird part was seeing
the late 20-something, shirtless guy with the heavy metal hair
climb up from under a bridge, scratch his head and groggily start
walking down the trail. It was as if he knew the sun was
setting, woke up, was like "Time to ROCK! WOOO!!" (all the
while doing the devil horns thing with his hands), and climbed out
of his troll lair from under the bridge to set out for the nearest
heavy metal show.
What I'm listening to right now:
Ani DiFranco -
Evolve
July 19,
2006
Long time no post, I know.
Been busy writing and stuff. Yup yup.
Anyways, we were pretty busy this
past weekend. Painting furniture blue, Kari's guitar pink,
doing other nifty stuff, etc. I finally came to the
realization that I have a huge amount of rare cds that I never
ever listen to, and while I like the bands a lot, I'm not nearly
the rabid fan I used to be. Sooo...if you like They Might Be
Giants or The Smiths, head on over to eBay and buy my stuff.
Speaking of music, anyone know
how to get music from a tape into an mp3 format? Difficulty:
no cassette player.
It's wicked hot. Ok, yeah,
it's hot wherever you are too, boo hoo, but here's it's amazingly
hot. All the time. Like in the upper 90's, low 100's
every day for the past month or two. We bring Baxter outside
and it's so unbelievably hot that the li'l guy
looks like this.
My Jones Soda picture is now
proudly hanging in one of the local Starbucks stores. I'll
post a pic as soon as I get it out of Kari's camera.
What I'm listening to right now:
LL Cool J -
Mama Said Knock You Out
July 9,
2006
Right now
Kari and
Baxter
are in Vermont at a family reunion, so it's unusually quiet around
here. At first I was looking forward to a little bit of "me"
time and the ability to devote as much free time as I wanted to
writing...but each day that passed brought with it a deeper sense
of lonliness and a huge case of missing the two of them. On
the plus side, Zoe has been acting a lot more relaxed and like her
normal self, which is probably because she hasn't had to worry
about being chased down by a piranha-like dog every time her paws
hit the floor.
So yeah, I've been keeping myself
busy writing, working on some little projects I've been meaning to
do, cleaning (yeah, that one surprised me too), and playing my
guitar a lot.
I also found a copy of my
favorite computer game from the late 80's,
F-19
Stealth Fighter and I've been playing it like it was 1989.
What I'm listening to right now:
Saybia -
Bend The Rules
July 2,
2006
The extra-long weekend is nice.
Very nice-a. Tonight has the feel of a Friday night instead
of it being almost bedtime on a Sunday. Baxter got some good
playtime tonight with the neighboring blue dappled dachshund,
Niki, having fun rolling each other down the hill, trying to steal
the coveted bone-shaped squeaky chew toy. You know, all that
fun puppy stuff.
We've had him about a month and a
half now, but the only time we notice how big he's gotten is when
he's playing with Niki. In the past six short weeks he's
more than doubled his weight and went from being a small fraction
of the size of his playmate to at least 2/3 her size (which is
still a fraction, I know, but it was unavoidable).
When Baxter sleeps, his feet make
small kicking motions and the occasional grunt escapes his mouth,
along with a tiny jerk of his head. I bet he dreams of
this...
What I'm listening to right now:
Mazzy Star -
Fade Into You
July 1,
2006
I take listening to my music very
seriously. Getting ready for work in the morning, the drive
in, at my desk, on the way home, sitting at my desk...I'm always
listening to music. I get really cranky if there is either
no music, or I'm in a situation where I'm subjected to awful music
I can't change or turn off.
For the past umpteen billion
years, I've listened to music on my computer in my trusty
Winamp player.
I like the ease of use and the hundreds of cool skins I've
downloaded (and, in some cases, made myself). I just plain
like it lots...which is why I surprised myself the other day when
I downloaded and installed iTunes. I really like the idea of
being able to rate each song, but at the same time, I'm finding
the task of rating my 7,500 songs to be more than a little
daunting. Anyway, I thought I'd try it for a week and see
how I like it.
NewCat has an annoying habit of
biting the pads of her front paws until they bleed. It
doesn't seem to hurt her at all since she still jumps around (jump
up, jump up, and get down!) and runs all over the apartment just
fine, but she's leaving little bloody paw prints all over the bed,
couch, and anywhere else she hangs out.
Silly me, I thought I could put
my mad First Aid Merit Badge skillz into play and fix the
self-wounding, stigmata-inducing, cat. First, I tried the magical trick of tying
a bathrobe belt around her waist (it messes with a cat's
equilibrium and they just tip over - pretty neat stuff...try it
today on a cat you know and love!).
Then Kari held her while I pulled out the first aid kit and tried
to clean her paws with antibiotic pads. Ooh, she didn't like
that. She liked it even less when I tried to wrap a spool of
gauze around her foot. For some reason, the tape didn't hold
to her fur and it just fell off. Kari suggested that I try
wrapping the gauze around and up her entire leg. Sure, at
the time, NewCat was squirming a lot, but nothing compared to the
psycho cat we had on our hands when I started getting crazy with
the gauze. After getting repeatedly bit, hit, and scratched
(btw, the kitty-immobilizing belt didn't work as well as we had
hoped), we put her on the floor and gave her a metric ass-ton of
treats. If only I had gotten my Veterinary Science Merit
Badge way back when, I'm sure the whole thing would have gone so
much better.
Recently, I was Googling myself
(oh come on, like you've never Googled yourself before), and
catching up on what the other 35+ people in the world named Eric
Nixon were up to, when I came across something interesting.
A band I like called
Morning Theft, quoted something I said here after I had seen
them live a while ago and
put it in their press kit. Pretty cool stuff.
What I'm listening to right now:
Dear Leader - A Billion
Served
© 2006 Eric Nixon. All rights reserved.
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