Yeah, I’m sure these tracks make someone happy, but I couldn’t really be any less interested. Ministry? The Zombies? Really? Hell, The Cranberries are the only ones I’ve even heard of! I guess there’s always next week…
Tracks:
Ministry “Cuz U R Next”
Ministry “LiesLiesLies”
Ministry “The Great Satan”
The Zombies “She’s Not There”
The Zombies “Tell Her No”
The Cranberries “Linger”
(All tracks are original master recordings)
This is an absolutely EPIC week – Social D and Disturbed?!?! Thisa totally makes up for Jane’s Addiction overload last week! Yeah, there’s some steely dan and othert stuff in there, too, which is cool, but Social D’s version of ‘Ring of Fire’ is beyond cool. Enjoy!
Social Distortion – Bad Luck
Social Distortion – Ring of Fire
Social Distortion – Story of My Life
Disturbed – Stricken
Disturbed – Stupify
Steely Dan – Black Friday
Steely Dan – My Old School
Elvis Costello – Radio Radio
The Replacements – Kids Don’t Follow
All tracks are master recordings.
** Dates for Rock Band game tracks are tentative and subject to change **
So as I’m listening to the Radio From Hell 13-hour show the other day, the DJs spent quite a bit of time fielding relationship questions, which they typically only do when Margaret Ruth is in attendance. It got a bit tedious after a few hours, but hey, it ain’t my show and 13 hours is a ridiculous amount of time to fill on the radio – I guess they had to find something, right?
Anyway, this gal comes on and says her husband had called in a few weeks earlier, and had basically decided that he didn’t want to belong to the same religion as her any longer. This traumatized her, and she went to live with her parents for a few weeks to sort things out and decide how the marriage would work from that point forward (if at all). What she realized while at her parents is that there were quite a few other areas that the two of them didn’t agree or see eye-to-eye on, and because of this she was questioning if she should be married to him at all.
I didn’t really pay attention to Kerry, Bill & Gina’s response, because I became lost in thoughts of my sweetheart.
You see, the fact is that her and I have very little in common.
She grew up around sports, played softball for several years, and loves sports.
I played one season of little-league when I was 8, and absolutely hated it. I don’t really do sports.
She was miss popularity in high school, hanging out with all the jocks
I was the typical geek (I know it’s hard to tell these days, I’ve been taking Cool Pills for several years, and I think they’re working) with only a few friends who were also geeks
Until a few years ago, I read a lot
Until a few years ago, she didn’t read because she didn’t like it. As she explains “if it’s any good, they’ll turn it into a movie anyway, then I can watch it”
When we first met, she had a very limited menu of food she would eat or enjoy
I love all kinds of food (with the exception of stuff that comes from the water)
And the list goes on and on…
From the outside, it’s really pretty amazing we’re together at all, or even friends.
But from where I’m at, with an inside view, it couldn’t be any more perfect.
You see, it’s the ways that she’s different than me that make my life so rich, and what makes her so valuable to me. She’s everything I’m not. It’s kinda like the old saying that without the dark, you can’t appreciate the light. She’s the light in my dark. She challenges me to see things differently, to take action where I otherwise may not have, to feel, experience, and grow rather than just coast by in life. It’s easy to say that I am a better man because of her, and it’s the truth.
I am so very grateful for her, and the life we have together. It’s overflowing with experiences and friends that I never would have known if not for her.
That’s not to say it’s easy. In fact, most of the time, it’s not. But just as our relationship is full of opposites, so’s this. It’s a beautiful and fulfilling thing most of the time, too.
And all of this pales next to the one thing that she gives me which no one else can – her love.
Megan’s parents have recently completed a 13-month proselyting mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Their children missed them terribly, and decided it would be fun to take a road trip back to Decatur, Illinois where they had served, visit some of the church historic sites that they had come to love. Here’s the story…
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Salt Lake City, Utah to Omaha, Nebraska
934 miles
I was kind of excited for the trip. It’s been 20 years since I’ve been past Denver on a road trip, and in between all the boring-as-shit driving, our country’s got some pretty groovy stuff to see. After meeting up with the other half of our caravan in Evanston (which pretty much ruled out the possibility of getting any booze while we were there), we set off towards Omaha, Nebraska.
Now, right away, we pass a wind farm. You know, with all the big ‘ol windmills and stuff, right? Well, I’m tellin’ ya, these were BIG windmills. They kinda freaked Megan out. She has this idea that they’re ‘Alien conduits’ or some shit, and that’s how the aliens spy on us. Who knew? And she seriously believes this. “They’re just a bit too random, and they give me the heebie-jeebies” she says to me.
We also passed a giant bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln that sits pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Weird.
Even weirder was a few hours later. For no discernible reason at all, there’s a 100-foot tall statue of Jesus. There’s no church there. Hell, there weren’t even any buildings – just Jesus in a field. Kinda freaky. Looking back, I suppose it was a precursor to all the Jesus we’d see in the next few days. Apparently the Midwest is all kinds of excited about Him, as there are billboards and statues all over the place talking about him or Christian beliefs (anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, pro-bible, where’s-your-soul-going-to-end-up-for-all-eternity, have-you-been-saved, etc.)
Oh, and the culinary highlight was some pretty awesome meatloaf in a truck stop diner. Megan thought I was crazy for ordering anything other than a burger there, but it was pretty damn good.
Wednesday
Omaha, Nebraska to Decatur, Illinois
482 miles
Yeah, there ain’t a whole lot happenin’ between Omaha and Decatur. There’s really not a whole lot happening IN either one of ‘em either, although the Holiday Inn Express we stayed at was pretty sweet, and we had Steak n’ Shake for dinner. For those of you who don’t know what that means, that’s just sad. They’re like the In-N-Out Burger of the East, only different. They make all their burgers from ground sirloin steak and all of their shakes are made by hand (not this Carl’s Jr. “Hand Scooped” bullshit, either, although those are pretty good, too.)
It turns out that my in-laws have been living next to a wicked-cool cemetery for the last year. Check it out:
Lots of mausoleums, and really old grave sites. In fact, in the last picture below, the flag you see marks the section of the cemetery for the Civil War graves. Yeah, people who died ion the Civil War are buried there, that’s how old this place is. Creepy-cool.
Thursday
Still in Decatur, Illinois
We drove to Springfield, which is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library. It was exceptionally cool. They’ve got it set up in sections of his life – his early childhood and the iconic log cabin, his career as a lawyer, his early political career, his presidency, and his assassination. All I can say is Abe easily makes it into my top 10 for people in this world that absolutely stood up for what they believe in. He’s up there with Jesus, Ghandi, Joseph Smith, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla.
Two of the coolest things are this video that shows the civil war in 4 minutes. The death toll is just mind-blowing.
The other was a series of pictures of his eyes across a five-year time span – one each year from the year he was elected to the year he was assassinated. It’s stunning how much this man aged in a period of just five years.
His tomb is a short drive from the museum, and it’s pretty impressive as well. The pictures really don’t do justice to the profound testament this monument is to such an amazing man.
Around 3:00 or so, Megan and I took off from the rest of the group to go pick up the boy at the airport. Spoiled little shit got to fly both ways. After picking up the boy and his aunt, we got lost and stuck in Springfield. Yeah, Megan has an iPhone, but without going into all the details, it wasn’t much help. This is about the point I turned into a complete asshole. You see, I hate – absolutely HATE – not knowing where I’m going or how to get from one place to another. I’m generally pretty good at finding my way around, but since the world’s pretty much flat from Denver on eastward, there’s no point of reference. I got really frustrated and was a real dick to everyone in the car and the folks outside the car that I didn’t think would shoot me for honking or yelling at them (there weren’t many of this latter group).
On a bright note, I saw half a dozen “Donks”. Although I didn’t get any pictures of the ones I saw, here’s what a GIS came up with. Let me assure you, a Donk looks even more ridiculous in person.
Here’s the Urban Dictionary definition, which is almost as funny as these things are in real life:
Any POS late 80′s or early 90′s American heap (preferably an Impala) that has large enough wheels installed until it resembles (and rides and handles like) a Conestoga wagon. This is done so it sits up high enough so as to be at the same eye level as the Playas with real juice ridin in their Escalades. Adding in a bad candy paint job and Wal-Mart sub box completes the transformation.
With no money left over for necessary suspension and brake upgrades, the lifespan is limited to a few drug runs or the first Police chase, whichever occurs first.
Eventually, we found our way back to Decatur, but not before eating at Carlos O’Kelly’s – a really awesome Irish-Mexican restaurant that only serves Mexican food.
Friday
Decatur, Illinois to Nauvoo, Illinois
211 miles
We rented a house overlooking the Mississippi river for the two nights we’d be staying in Nauvoo. I shoulda taken a picture of the view, but I didn’t. However, the view from the front room wasn’t nearly as impressive as the 10’ rosary on the ledge next to the stairs. Yeah, that’s not a typo – this sucker was ten feet long. The crucifix at the end was a foot tall on it’s own! Now, just what the hell do you do with a 10’ rosary? Not really convenient for reciting prayers and stuff. I promise I’m not making fun of someone else’s religious artifact with malicious intent – it was just completely unexpected and bizarre.
Seriously, I knew you wouldn’t believe unless you saw it for real, so here it is. I know it’s all dark and obscured like a Sasquatch or Loch Ness picture, but this shit was for real.
Saturday
Still in Nauvoo
Now, let me just say as a preface, I wasn’t warned that the plan was to forego eating all day in order to get as much sight-seeing in as possible. Had I been warned, I would have packed a lunch or something. As it was, I ended up surviving on a pocketful of beef jerky and Swedish fish as we were overwhelmed with Mormon history and the intricacies of life in Nauvoo 200 years ago.
Needless to say, I was a bigger asshole today than I was the previous day in Springfield. How Megan puts up with some of my shit I’ll never know, because I really was unbearable.
In my defense, we went on two separate carriage rides hat were an hour or so each. The two Belgian Gelding horses had just been watered and fed, and were gassy to boot, so our trip was punctuated by horse-farts and the unmistakable waterfall/garden hose-sound of a horse relieving himself. Yeah, smells of the era were an important part of the experience, I guess.
Some of it was actually pretty cool. John Browning, the founder of Browning Firearms lived in Nauvoo for a short time, gunsmithing and stuff. His house had all kinds of cool guns in it, some that he even built. He was a pretty talented feller and had dozens of patents that have since been sold to the likes of Colt, Remington, Savage Arms, and others. This Browning machine gun was used extensively in both WWI and WWII. I didn’t get a picture of the one on display in his house, but this is what it looked like:
Now, although John Browning’s house was pretty cool, without a doubt the single-most… um, interesting thing I saw in Nauvoo was the “show” at the Cultural Hall, titled “Rendezvous”. Lemme just paint this picture for you. Imagine a smallish church with wooden pews, and up front, just 4 feet from the first row, is a stage, complete with red velvet drapes. The lights dim, the curtain flies open (and I really mean that, it opened crazy-fast), and here’s a stage full of senior missionaries singing about Old Nauvoo, and here comes more senior missionaries marching up the aisle and singing. They finish their number. There’s applause. The curtain closes, and then flies open again. A new number. More old people singing. More applause. Someone forgets their line. Everyone laughs. Another number. More applause.
The best part for me, though, was the little old man in the front row that didn’t know any of the words to any of the numbers, but moved his mouth right along with everyone else anyway. He was like a grown-up version of Garth.
Now, as a footnote, we saw “Rendezvous” on Thursday night. We spent all day Friday in Nauvoo touring the sites, and the tour guides were the senior missionaries we’d seen the night before. Without fail, every one of them asked if we were going to see the show that night, and our reply every time was that we’d seen it the night before, and recognized them from the show.
Yeah, from my perspective it was an old-folks road show, but they clearly had a good time doing it and really loved sharing it with people, so more power to ‘em.
Around 5:00 or so, as I’m withering away from hunger, we left Historic Nauvoo (all their stuff closed at 4:00) and went up the hill to modern Nauvoo, where they had a café that served a bad-ass Chicago Dog and a really good rootbeer float. Having nourished myself, I was pretty confident I could make it back to the house a few miles down the road.
Sunday
Nauvoo, Illinois to Kansas City, Missouri
259 miles
I still hadn’t recuperated from my bout with asshole-it is, and was completely unbearable on this day as well. As Megan puts it, she didn’t even want to be in the same state as me. Not real hard to do back east, especially being right near the border, as we were, but you get the point. I was a tremendous dick for about 3 days.
I did have one of the most surreal experiences of my life on this day, however. One of Megan’s ancestors, Charles C. Rich (he figures pretty prominently in Mormon history, was the General of the Mormon Battalion, and was one of the first apostles) had built a cabin in the backwoods of Missouri. When we got to the site, which had no marker or signage (we found it by following directions in some obscure magazine and matching the picture in the magazine to what we saw from the road), I found what has to be one of the most bizarre locations on the planet. Check out the pics below. I really wish I had a better camera, but check this out, in the background is a cabin that was built over 200 years ago. It’s being held up by a metal support frame and cables. The woods all rotted out, and without this framework, it would have fallen into a pile of decaying wood a long time ago.
A few yards in front of the cabin is a fairly new (built within the last 5 years, I’m sure) 10’ square “house” with cable internet and Dish network strung to it. The door was slightly ajar, but the bottles of pesticide on the side of the house weren’t faded at all, so although I was pretty certain nobody was there, it was clear that someone had been very recently. Then a few yards of to the side of this newer house was a shack cobbled together from 2-3 smaller structures. This also looked like it had been lived in recently. I kept waiting for some kind of “Deliverance” moment or something (which of course, never happened). Needless to say, it was a really odd experience.
We also stopped at Adam-Ondi-Ahman earlier in the day, but the cabin was pretty much the highlight of the day.
Oh, except for the BBQ once we got to Kansas City!
For those of you who don’t know (dummies), Kansas City is one of the two homes of BBQ, with Memphis Tennessee being the other. KC is all about the pit and cooking many different kinds of meat, whereas Memphis is all about the ribs and the sauce. Two schools of thought for producing delicious meat.
Anyway, one of The Boy’s friends grew up in KC and said that Gates was the place to go for the best BBQ. Turns out, there was one two blocks from the hotel. So we walked. In an unfamiliar city, not knowing what part of town we were in or even if it was safe. I can tell you that we were the only white folks in the restaurant, but everyone was really friendly and helpful.
There’s a side-by-side comparison at the bottom of this post, but it was a VERY appreciated recommendation, because Gates had some of the best BBQ I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve had plenty of good BBQ in my day.
Monday
Still in Kansas City
We had tickets to the Royals-White Sox game Monday night, so we pretty much had the whole day to explore the city. We decided to explore more BBQ. One of my friends (who had also grown up in KC) suggested several excellent restaurants that were personal favorites. We went with his top pick, Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, which happens to be rated as the best BBQ in the nation by the Zagat Survey. Again, the side-by-side and review is at the end of this post, but it was brilliant.
The Royals have a pretty nice stadium. Granted, I’ve only been to one other major league park, but this one was nice. The Royals kicked the shit out of the Sox. I spent two innings with Megan getting food, which was worth the wait. Here’s a pic of my 12-inch weiner.
Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri to Fort Collins, Colorado
655 miles
This is some boring country. Seriously, it’s flat. The road is straight. Once in awhile there’s a tree. It’s lame as hell. And people live here. They’ve got ‘Aliens’, too, although Megan says it’s probably okay and the Aliens chose wisely, because the people in Kansas are too dumb to even know they got probed. She’s probably right. We did see a truck carrying an Alien part, though, which kinda freaked her out, too.
Wednesday
Fort Collins, Colorado to Murray, Utah
455 miles
Almost home. Somewhere around Rock Springs, Megan decides she wants to follow her parents to Ogden and see them greet the baby (who’s almost 3). I’m just ready to be home, so Megan drops me off at the Echo, Utah visitors center. WTF? Does Echo get that many visitors? Anyway, Jerry was coming to pick me up there, and I only had to wait about 45 minutes for him to get there. While I’m waiting, the visitors center closes. I mention to the dude closing up shop that I’m waiting for my friend, who’s only 10 minutes out at this point.
“Is he coming from Kimball, or from Evanston?” he asks
“he just passed Kimball, why?”
“Well” the old dude responds “if he just passed Kimball, he’s more like 40 minutes away. You see, the next exit on that side of the freeway is about 15 miles up. He’ll have to go there, plus turn around and drive back, so you’re looking at almost another hour.”
“shit” I mutter, frustrated
“‘course, exit 169 is only about a mile down that way” he says pointing towards Salt Lake City
So I start off at a brisk walk, and call Jerry to tell him to exit at 169. Jerry picked me up with this really wqeird look on his face. I can only imagine how odd it must be for someone to call in a favor and have you pick them up in the middle of nowhere under a freeway off ramp. Anyway, an hour later and I was home.
Tada.
The end.
