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Van Halen FTW

December 31, 2007

Last night we went and saw Van Halen in concert at the MGM Grand Garden arena. I have been so jazzed about seeing this show, I was really hoping I wouldn’t be let down. I can definitely say, I was NOT let down at all. The show was great.

If you haven’t followed along with the rotating cast of players in Van Halen, Sammy Hagar is out and David Lee Roth is back in al lead singer and front man for the band. Long gone is his shoulder length blond hair, replaced by some massive sideburns. Michael Anthony is no longer playing bass, enter Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s 16 year old son. Not only does he play bass, he’s also doing double duty as a backup vocalist. The kid is good.

They played for over 2 hours and didn’t play a single song from the Sammy Hagar era. That’s a pretty big chunk of time to just cut out of history, but they played so many Halen classics that I didn’t really miss hearing the newer stuff.

One thing that I think Van Halen has perfected is the use of the jumbo video screen at their shows. Their stage setup is minimal leaving plenty of room for Dave to run around. But, they have an enourmous video screen that is as wide as their stage and about 20 feet tall. Even if you have horrible seats, you can still see the action.

At one point I was thinking how cool it must be for Wolfgang to be 16 years old and playing in front of sold out crowds. But then my parental instinct took over and I thought that it must be so fucking cool for Eddie to be on stage, look to his right and see his kid playing bass and singing back-up for one of the worlds biggest bands of all time. That has just gotta be cool.

It’ll be interesting to see if this newly reformed Van Halen line-up will put out a new album and go back on the road in a year or two. If so, I’ll definitely go back and see them again.

Oh, and here’s something that made me feel just a little bit old… The first time I saw Van Halen in concert was 23 years ago. Ugh.

If you want to see some video clips from the Van Halen tour, YouTube has a bunch. Here’s a link to some. Enjoy.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Music Tagged With: ,

Watching Football History

December 29, 2007

I don’t consider myself to be a football fan, though I do enjoy watching the game from time to time. But, the decision to watch the game tonight between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants was a no-brainer. The Patriots came in with a record of 15-0, one win away from a perfect 16-0 regular season. This is something that hasn’t been done in over 30 years. There is something special about watching historic games.

The Giants, who secured their playoff position had nothing to gain by winning today, so many people thought they would rest all their starting players. At the beginning of the game, it seemed the Patriots thought that, too. They got off to a slow start while the Giants came out with all their big guns firing. The Giants scored first and had the lead at the end of the first, second and third quarters. But, in the fourth quarter, the Patriots took over and scored twice to take the lead. The Giants would score with about a minute left in the game, but it was too-little-too-late.

The Patriots broke a bunch of records in the game, too. Most touchdown throws in a season by a quarterback, most touchdown receptions in a season by a receiver and most points in a season by a team.

It was an exciting game that had back and fourth action throughout. It’s no wonder that Football is the biggest sport in the country.

Congratulations to the Patriots. Good luck in the playoffs.

Filed Under: Sports

So many movies

December 27, 2007

Since my Christmas vacation started, I’ve seen a bunch of movies. Here’s the list of movies I’ve watched, and what I thought of each:

The Pacifier
Is it any wonder that nobody has heard from Vin Diesel since he made this movie? Wow is it bad. But what could I have been expecting? The movie is about a tough Army dude who babysits some kids and whips them in to shape. There is some other hair-brained sub-plots going on around all of this, but don’t bother. It’s basically the same formula you’ve seen before. The kids hate him at first and make is life a living hell, then there is some break through, he changes his tactics and the kids love him, and then they foil some big plot to blow up the world… or something like that.

Guess Who
One word: Formulaic. I swear, I’ve seen this movie 20 times before. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Girl brings home boy to meet parents for the weekend. Dad disapproves of boy from the start. Boy can’t do anything right and makes a big scene. Girl/boy get in to fight and break up. Dad steps in to tell girl that she’s losing a good man. Dad goes and finds boy who has headed back home. Sappy make-up scene. Boy/Girl happy, dad approves of boy, all is right in the world. There were still some laughs to be had, but don’t expect there to be anything original in this one.

High School Musical
I watched this one with my niece, nephews and my kids. Well, it started off with all of us watching it. At some point they all bailed and I watched the rest of it alone. This is basically an updated version of the movie Grease. It’s wildly popular with kids and I could see why. The songs are fun, the characters are funny. I enjoyed it.

A Christmas Story
This is probably my favorite Christmas movie of all time. There are so many great quotes from this movie. I could probably recite the entire movie as it’s going along. If there is any way possible that you haven’t seen this movie, you absolutely must. It is absolutely great.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Even though I hadn’t seen the first one, I really enjoyed this sequel. I’m told that the first one is funnier and has a better flow to it. I’ll have to see for myself. I enjoy the whole historic conspiracy theory story line. I’m not quite sure how I never saw the first one in the theater, or since it’s been out on DVD… I’m thinking it’s about time to get back to using Netflix again. My list of movies to see on DVD is really starting to grow.

The Bourne Ultimatum
The third film in the Bourne series was pretty enjoyable. This one centers around Jason being tired of being on the run. He’s trying to find his real identity and bring down the people who trained him to be the hired killer that he is. He ends up getting help from some of the people who are hunting him down. In the end he succeeds and goes missing, though probably no longer being hunted. There is a lot of descent chase and fight scenes. I’m willing to forgive some of the thin plot points in favor of more action!

That’s all so far. But, I don’t think that’s all I’ll see before my vacation is through. I received The Departed for Christmas and my wife wants to see Enchanted. I’ll likely watch both of these in the next couple days.

How about you? Seen any good movies this week?

Filed Under: Movies

A Musical Christmas

December 25, 2007

This year Christmas seemed to be at least a week long. Traveling to California to celebrate Christmas with family was a bit of a last minute idea, but turned out to be a great one. We don’t get out there very much these days, so I’m glad we decided to make that happen. My sister is such an awesome host. She always gives us her bedroom and she sleeps on the coach while we are in town. Thanks, Nic!

This Christmas ended up being very musical in nature. We got our Son a candy-apple red Ibanez guitar and amplifier. The rest of the family all bought him gifts to go along with the guitar, like a guitar stand, strap, tuner and an instructional DVD/book. He’s quite stoked. I really hope he takes an interest in playing it.

For my Daughter, we got her a Casio keyboard. It has a TON of features on it. Lot’s of background tunes that you can play along with. We still need to pick her up an instructional DVD/book, though. I’m pretty sure that she’s going to take to the piano like a fish to water. We shall see.

I hope you all had a great Christmas!

Cheers!

Filed Under: Family

Enjoying more family and some sillyness

December 24, 2007

Last night was to be our last night in California before heading back home to celebrate Christmas at our place. We, of course, had dinner at Captain Kidd’s again. That makes 3 meals at Kidd’s in about 25 hours. Did I mention I like that place?

At dinner we met up with my cousin, her boyfriend and her son. I haven’t seen them in quite some time. It’s either been 5 or 8 years. We aren’t sure exactly which. Since her son is currently 10, he’s grown QUITE a lot since we last saw him. Amazing how time flies. It was nice to hang out with them, even if it was only for an hour or two.

Let me share some photos with you from the weekend:

My sister the luchador 

This was my sister wearing a luchador sweatshirt. It zips all the way up the front over your face. It has mesh for eye holes so you can still see. It’s painted like a luchador mask. She works on the docks so she said it would keep her face nice and warm. Sadly, we weren’t able to talk her in to buying it. A shame.

Nice Outfit, Lady 

We passed this lady as we returned home this morning. I could not pass up taking a shot of her wearing sweats and a leopard print jacket. Apparently she doesn’t own a single mirror.

And finally, my personal favorite…

Ass gasket tucked in the back of her pants 

While at lunch yesterday, we saw a lady who had an ass gasket (the piece of paper you put down on the toilet seat to keep the germs off your bum) tucked in to the back of her pants. I walked over, snapped the photo and returned to our table.

We had a great time in California hanging out with family. I hope we can do it again soon.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family Tagged With: , , ,

Family Dinner at Captain Kidd's

December 22, 2007

If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that my family owns a fish market / restaurant in Redondo Beach, California named Captain Kidd’s and, despite the fact that I worked there for over 11 years, it is still my favorite place in the world to eat. Every time we head to California to see family, our first stop is always Captain Kidd’s.

We left Vegas about 2pm and arrived at Kidd’s around 6:30. My grandma was already there, and my sister showed up a few minutes later with her three kids. My mom and dad would show up a while later. We are in California pretty rarely, so it’s always nice to meet up at the restaurant with the family for dinner.

Dinner was awesome, as usual. My wife had a Pacific lobster and I had shark, scallops and shrimp. Oh, that’s after I had a bowl of clam chowder. Yum, it was so good.

After dinner we exchanged Christmas gifts and took a bunch of pictures. After a couple hours at the restaurant the kids were all getting pretty restless. We headed back to my sister’s place. With the 200 mile distance between us, my kids don’t get a lot of chances to play with their cousins, so it’s nice that they get to spend an evening playing games with them.

Tomorrow we’ll head back to Captain Kidd’s for lunch. The rest of the day is sorta up in the air right now. As for dinner plans, I’ll see what I can do about getting us back to Kidd’s one more time.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: ,

Family get together

December 22, 2007

Last night we had an early Christmas celebration with my mother-in-law and both brother-in-laws and their families. One of the B-i-Ls is going out of town for the holidays so this was going to be our last chance to see them before Christmas.

As soon as they got here, Rock Band was in full effect. It is such a great party game. The funny part was that before anybody had tried it, they all kept saying that they weren’t going to sing. But, as soon as one person did it, everybody else wanted their turn at it. Who cares how bad you sing? Just get up there and belt it out. Have fun. And that’s what we did.

I was pretty stoked because after everybody tried the drums, most people decided to stick to guitar or vocals. That meant I got to stay and play drums on almost every song. Damn, Metallica’s Enter Sandman drives me nuts. There is one section on it that just confounds me. Even on the easy level. Though, I did move up and play on Medium for a bunch of the songs.

Only the B-i-L that is going out of town and his wife opened gifts. Mainly because we forced them to. They are basically newlyweds, so we thought it would be a lot of fun to give them a book I found called “Position of the Day“. It has diagrams for all sorts of interesting sexual positions to try during the year. One is called the “YouTube” and the picture shows both people holding video cameras. If they try that one out, I would rather not receive a link to the results. I shot video of them opening the gift. You can see it here.

Good times.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: , , ,

Secret Santa day plus company gifts

December 20, 2007

Today at the office, a group of us all swapped Secret Santa gifts. I have to say that the gift I was given is absolutely perfect for me and I will DEFINITELY put it to use. It’s a desktop charging station. You put a power strip inside it and then there are 3 spots on top, plus a tray in the front where you can set items like cameras and cell phones when they need to be charged. The charging cords are all out of the way and kept neat and tidy. I currently don’t know who my Secret Santa was, but I thank you very much (whoever you are).

I was happy to see the reaction from the person for whom I played Secret Santa. We picked up a gift set from Bath and Bodyworks. It came with a purse plus 3 full-size bottles of lotion, bath gel and one other item. I got an awesome deal on it, so she was convinced that we went way over our $20 limit. Not so. I’m just that good of a shopper. OK, fine. I got lucky.

Today was also the day that our company handed out some other gifts. Each employee was given a list of 9 gift packages that we could choose from. I decided on the iPod Nano 3rd Gen. Yes, I already have a Nano, but not one of the new ones that plays videos. My Son has already asked if he can have my old one. We’ll see how it goes.

Speaking of the family, tonight was pretty cool. I got to play Rock Band with both of my kids. I played drums, my Son played guitar and my Daughter sang. We performed Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. It was so much fun playing with both of them. We then switched it up to let my Daughter play drums. That didn’t go so well and we ended up quitting. I tried to get her to go back on vocals, but she didn’t know any of the other songs on the list and didn’t want to play anymore. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Hopefully we can talk her in to playing again.

Filed Under: General, Work Tagged With: , ,

How to talk to your kids about pregnancy

December 20, 2007

Recently on CNN.com I read this article about Jamie Lynn Spears (little sister to Britney Spears) announcing that she’s pregnant. While I could care less about her being pregnant, but they were talking about how parents are going to explain to their children who may watch Jamie’s show Zoey 101 on Nickelodeon. Since I have two teenagers at home, this is definitely a topic I wanted to follow up on.

I consider myself very lucky that I have two fantastic children who are respectful of others, don’t get in to trouble at school and have zero interest in drinking or drugs. Seriously, with that stuff out of the way, anything else that comes up with the kids is pretty small potatoes. Sure, I can’t get my son to clean his room to save my life. But if it’s a choice between a clean room and having to worry that they are out doing drugs or shoplifting, I’ll take the messy room.

Last night while we were out shopping, I brought up this subject with my wife. I explained everything I had read on CNN.com and how some of the parents who had responded to the article had said that they would use this news as a way to talk to their kids about making smart choices and waiting until they are older to experiment with having sex.

This morning, after my wife dropped off the kids at school, she came in to the room while I was getting ready for work and tells me that she spoke with the kids this morning on the way to school. I asked how it went. She says the following:

I asked them if they knew who Jaime Lynn Spears was. Our son said, “Yeah, she’s pregnant.” I said that I know I have good kids who make smart choices and I am very proud of them. I realize that you are teenagers and that you may be starting to have questions about sex. So, if you do have any questions, ask your Father.

She sold me up the river. Damn her!

OK, actually, she told me that they all three got a big laugh out of it.

Not only am I lucky to have two great kids, I have an amazing wife who knows how to talk to our kids about sensitive topics without turning them in to embarrassing situations. Be setting a light-hearted tone she opens the door for the kids to ask questions in a non-threatening environment.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: ,