I love this song live but the part that cracks me up, and maybe it’s just me, is that the other guys in the band seem to look at the white guy like, “Why are you playing so fast?”

I had totally forgotten about posting these. Warped Tour was July 15th so it’s been well over a month now, but I know my friends would still like to see the pictures and get their stuff they left in my backpack. Here’s the pictures. You can get your stuff if you buy me a beer in Olde Towne.

There were lots of vendors with tents giving away cool free stuff.

Unfortunately, the tents were near the stages but the beer was next to the bathrooms on the other side of the venue. By the time you got a beer and walked to a stage, it was either time to go take a piss or time to go get another beer. So I saw like 3 bands perform. All day. At a music festival.

Since we did a lot of walking, we saw lots of interesting things and lots of strange-looking people.

The beer was cheap and the servers were happy, which are both lies. A music festival in the middle of a Tuesday doesn’t really fit into the schedule of the average working adult, so at least the lines were short.

I learned that even though there was a massive age difference between me and my friends and most of the other people at the show, we still shared a lot of the same ideals.

If you had a beer once you got close to the tents and the stages, you had to go in time out. I bet we stood there for a couple hours throughout the day.

This Hare Krishna guy wanted to trade a book for a donation. I told him I wanted a free copy of the book that, if I enjoyed, I would make a donation. It didn’t work that way and he took the book away from me. You know how some movie trailers show all the good parts and the rest of the film is just garbage? That’s how his sell on the book was. I ended up finding the copy of the stupid book. So I went back and got a picture with him and told him I got the copy from “the other guy”, which somehow made sense at the time. I did actually skim through the book. I think it’s the only book I’ve ever actually thrown away. The whole thing reads like a book report on the ideas of all the great philosophers. The problem I had with it was that the Hare Krishna try to play off the words of people like Socrates as their own. Was that too heavy for this story of a fun and illustrated day of inebriation and music? Sorry…

Apparently I rescued Katy Perry from a nice day.

And yeah, there were some bands there or something.

This ramp was about four times as long as it was tall, which made it safe for the kids and boring to watch.

One of the few bands I saw any of was this awesome punk trio called Tat. Sort of a Distillers/Bouncing Souls sound. Good stuff if you like punk. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/tat “Pessimist” is my favorite track on their MySpizzle.

Somewhere around the second beer, me and Ray ran into Jon, Aaron, Woody and girlie. (Sorry, I’m bad with names.)

Who doesn’t like giant bear people?

Woody and Jon entered a trivia contest held by a New Jersey douche bag.

I couldn’t help but think this was the modern iteration of Punky Brewster.

Woody played guitar and drums while Jon yelled a lot.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we all felt like this.

Jon got some jailbait to help him put on a temporary tattoo.

I bumped into Elvis.

Ray met the fat kid from Superbad.

Ray liked the dude with a keytar covering Bob Marley songs.

Somehow the camera captured how everything was looking to us by the time it got dark.

On the way out the CDs were $5 but the hugs were free.

Fatboy Slim, David Byrne (Talking Heads) and Dizzee Rascal have collaborated on a new song.  It’s a catchy tune I dig if for no other reason than to hear David Byrne sounding as good as ever.  And did I mention this video has the most naked chicks I’ve ever seen at once? Anyway, check it out.

If you started your own business, which happened to be providing music, news and comedy for paying customers, why would the federal government have any say over the content you included?  If you were writing a book, should you have to include a heroic Native American character as per Uncle Sam?  If you made a movie, should you have to make it tell a story set in the US where an Italian immigrant did something nice?  What kind of shit is that!?  Today the FCC approved the Sirius/XM merger, but with a few conditions.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of a proposal that would allow the deal to proceed as long as the companies meet a series of consumer protection conditions, including a three-year cap on prices, set-aside of channels for minority and non-commercial programming and payment of a $19.7 million penalty for past FCC rule violations. Source.

Now, who do you think knows what their customers want:  the satellite radio companies themselves or the massive bureaucracy of the FCC?  Sirius alone was already offering channels for kids, women, gays, lesbians, and various religious content.

A quick Google shows that out of the the total population of the US, 20% of us aren’t white and 7% of us have satellite radio.  Based solely on those numbers, that means that satellite radio already has over 4 million minority customers, amongst which I count myself.  If we weren’t getting suitable programming, do you really think we’d be shelling out $12 a month for it?

My favorite color is blue.  At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before the federal government begins to mandate that in a given office building the color of paint on the walls must be divided equally between the 7 hues of the visible spectrum to support diversity because we are too stupid to choose a color of paint for ourselves.

Apparently all of us in America need the federal government to step in and mandate that a company offer a specific amount of programming to one type of person or another.  Apparently we minorities are too dumb to choose what entertainment services to purchase, what radio stations to listen to and what content to be entertained by.  If we let the federal government and agencies like the FCC continue to destroy the free market, maybe we are as dumb as they think we are.  Legislation like this is an insult to everybody involved in these companies from the top down.

I’ve had Sirius for probably 4 or 5 years now.  Within that period I also had XM for a month and hated it.  I’ve stuck with Sirius and loved every minute of it.  Between Neil and I, I would say we’ve sold a dozen people or more on the service.  It truly has something for everyone.  Initially I was very disappointed to hear that the two wanted to merge.  I though prices would go up from reduced competition.  I thought the play lists would become a Clear Channel knock-off like XM more commercial.  Actually, these things will still probably happen, but there’s not all bad news coming out of this:

Among the conditions that both companies had already accepted were à la carte programming that would give consumers flexibility in which channels they pay for, the permission for any electronics company to develop devices that would receive the service and a price freeze for three years.

Shares in both companies rose on Wednesday in anticipation of approval. XM rose 94 cents, or 10.3 percent, to close at $10.04. Sirius closed at $2.68, up 30 cents, or 12.6 percent.

Customized programming and better numbers from both companies is definitely something I can get behind.  We can only hope that the à la carte programming is a huge success and cable and satellite television providers follow suit.  Source.

The good news:  I got off work, went to Hampton to pick up my Scrambler.   It runs like new!  All it took was a new battery, some fuel stabilizer and what was it?  Oh yeah, the pros at All Out Cycles basically ripped out the gas tank, fuel lines and carburetor and scrubbed the dirt and trash off them all.  I can’t believe I’ve finally got it fixed!  I am just as excited today as when I got it new.

The bad news:  After I got back from picking up my Scrambler, I got tied up in a bunch of stuff at my parents’ place.  Between moving some appliances with Dad, eating dinner, helping Ma with the kittens, trying to fix the touch lamp said kittens broke and so on…I just got home and took a shower.  So yeah, tonight is not the night and tomorrow isn’t looking great either unless you wanna tag in to go help Dad set poles for a lean-to.

I will give you another teaser pic.  Here’s me with a cool Hare Krishna guy.  He tried to get me to make a donation to a group I knew nothing about in exchange for a book I didn’t know if I’d like.  After bartering for a bit he decided we didn’t have a deal but on the next trip to the bathroom I scored one somebody left by the sink.  When I passed by him again I asked him if I could put his picture on my web site after I lied to him about how I got a copy of the book.  He said yes and asked what the site was.  When I told him Kevin108.com he got really excited.  He said 108 was a very spiritual number and showed me the significance in the book.  Free book, neat story…I thought that was pretty cool.

Was a long, fun, strange day.  I have a lot of pictures but I didn’t get home until late last night and I was way too drunk to mess with them then.  I’ll try to have them up later this afternoon.

As a teaser, here’s the first pic of the day:

Katy Perry being interviewed by Mike and Bob

I “won” tickets to Warped Tour yesterday and I was checking out this year’s band line-up:

Misunderstood lyrics to “Yellowledbetter” by Pearl Jam.