Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 28

The quality might be crap since it's done all on the Palm directly from the van, let me know how it sounds and see ya 2006...

60 degrees on New Year's

60 degrees on New Year's
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

at least 60 and sunny in Austin this morning.



We're contemplating driving the 12 hours straight to Phoenix today. We'll see how long we can go, but we gain an hour in Mountain Time and we could be partying by Midnight ans be able to spend the whole day tomorrow relaxing in the Arizona desert.



I tied a fair one on last night at The Dirty Dog. We played well (though I lost my bass cord momentarily on two songs) and I still didn't get that "Keep Austin Weird" sticker for the back of the van. You'll hafta keep on reminding me, Dario.



We're at our buddy, Swami's house, right now and I'm just hanging outside alone and enjoying the sunshine.

Scorpio Rising

Scorpio Rising
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

is playing at the Flamingo Cantina tonight. We won't be able to check them out, but I bought their CD used on my 18th birthday because I thought they had a kickass name. It was good mid-90's alt-rock.



Our friends, Doodle from Austin band, American Graveyard, and his wife, just showed up too. Chances of tonight being a great party are at 110% right now.

The Dirty Dog

The Dirty Dog
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

We're up at 10:30, we just loaded in and every time we come back to 6th St. in Austin, I realize how much I love this town.

I'm an idiot

I got so excited about finding a .wav editor for the Palm, that I was playing with it and doing noise reduction on the file and then accidentally deleted the podcast we did from the van. Yeah, I know.

We're just relaxing with some friends in Houston today and getting ready to tie one on in Austin on the Eve of the Eve tonight!

To see Wendy's Photo Blog Posts....

I'm having trouble with the new Google Blogger, so when I post photos from my phone they are now going to

http://sunspotwendy.blogspot.com/

Hopefully we'll get this fixed sometime soon, but in the meantime please visit the link above to see my pics from the tour!

~Wendy.

Houston!

The drive today was terrifying from Dallas to here. It was a torrential downpour and we had our hazards on for most of the roll, but now we're at the Last Concert Cafe and it's fantastic- palm trees, outdoor stage (but we'll be playing inside because it might rain later), and you don't need a jacket outside. I'd take a picture by a palm tree but my Treo doesn't have a flash. We'll have to send one in tomorrow.

The Aardvark in Ft. Worth was a lot of fun and we got to hang with old friends and met some great new bands and people (more about that on the podcast that I'll upload as soon as I can convert the .wav to an .mp3.) And I'm working on something now where we can podcast directly from the van without needing a laptop, so more updates will be forthcoming.

Parked and resting in Ft. Worth

Parked and resting in Ft. Worth
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

It's not sunny, but it's certainly pleasant enjoying the 66-degree high today in Tejas.



We got to the hotel a little before 10 last night and now it's just lazing around and taking care of loose ends before loading in to The Aardvark tonight. It's fantastic to have the time to be comfortable for a little while and appreciate it.

Definitely not the crack of noon

Before 7 and I'm already up and ready to go. we got to the hotel from the venue at one last night but it's four hours to Oklahoma City and we gotta be there for a lunchtime show at 11:30.

It gets light so late these days it feels a lot earlier than it is. we'll try to stick a podcast up later about yesterday.

Scott Holt Was Here

Scott Holt Was Here
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Our man in Wausau goes out on tour with Scott Holt and we thought it was cool that he's been through Springfield at the same place we have too!

Eve of the Tour

Just finishing up packing for the tour...

Here's the route, please spread the word!

Wendy's DrummerCam: Saturday 12/23/06 @ BBC Upper Level, Milwaukee, WI

Loads of fun at the BBC last night.... Thanks so much to everyone who was there to make it a great night!

Also - If you're looking for the DrummerCams from Cincinnati and Eau Claire, unfortunately my camera has gone MIA. I think it is in the van, but I don't know for sure (haven't seen it yet). Hopefully we'll discover it on tour so I can get those files uploaded for you... And, if anyone happens to have found a wayward Olympus SP-310 PLEASE let me know!

Xmas Party Tonight!

Xmas Party Tonight!
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Shooting Blanks can't make it, but it's time to party at the BBC.

Mastermind

Mastermind
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

We're winding down the mastering session with Trevor Sadler from Mastermind in Milwaukee. Two more songs to go and the music section of the album is complete. We were at Smart Studios until after two last night with our man, Mark Haines, finishing the mixes..



*ALERT* SHOWTIMES FOR TONIGHT HAVE CHANGED *ALERT*

Shooting Blanks cancelled, so it's only us and Revolush tonight. We'll be starting a little after 11 tonight instead of Midnight. Don't be late or you'll miss us!

Giant squid footage!

No time to elaborate today, but my inner cryptozoologist was piqued when I saw that they finally had video footage of a giant squid.

Cool Show Tonight (12.21) at The King Club

I don't know if we'll be there because we're busy in the studio finishing mixing of the new record, but if we can, we'll be at The King Club to check out The Optimistic. They'll be playing the middle slot (probably around 11 o'clock) between The Dorothy Heralds and Reason For Leaving.

The other bands are jam-rock, but The Optimistic is more straight-ahead, I saw them at the Tammy Baldwin benefit at The Union a coupla months back and they're great, Spoon-ish rock. Their drummer was born and bred in Mukwonago (already up on the cool list), who also plays in Mama Digdown's Brass Band.

Anyway, check it out if you can. It's easily worth the five bucks.

FM 102.1 Finally Streaming

I got what I wanted for Christmas and that's FM 102.1 in Milwaukee is streaming online.

It just went from Green Day to Death Cab to Alice in Chains ("Got Me Wrong" from Sap and the Clerks soundtrack, I've been meaning to download that one forever!)

Life is hard, kid.

I hate to spoil Christmas magic or whatever but it's kind of funny that this English school let the toy out of the bag to their students about "Father Christmas".

Isn't Santa just a microcosm of how we used to use religion and the bogeyman of hell to make sure that people behave on the idea that if there's no all-seeing judge, then people will just behave however they want to, regardless of the consequences? The whole thing is insulting.

Best. Mugshot. Ever.

My man, Rip Torn, making Nick Nolte's shot look like a Sears portrait.

The Trojan Rabbit

...and the party continues with yet more exceptional rock!

Pike

We are in Cincy at the Poison Room, getting ready to rock. We just took some press photos and our friends in Pike are totally kicking ass right now!

More on The Haunchies!

Someone took some photos of Mystic Road and it looks like someone wrote a song about The Haunchies! Here's another article where they get mentioned.

And for the best, you can join the Myspace group, I Believe In Haunchyville. Will wonders never cease?

Green Lantern Creator Died in Muskego

The creator of The Green Lantern, died in Muskego (just a hop, skip, and a jump from the thriving metropolis of Big Bend, Wisconsin) a few days ago. He was my favorite Superfriend. Martin Nodell was 81. If you're wondering who Green Lantern is, there's an excellent profile of him here.

Muskego also contains "Haunchyville" (look to the bottom of the link to find where Dennis McCann of the Journal-Sentinal references my article from Weird Wisconsin with, alas, no credit) an area where it is fabled that murderous little people live. I've gone exploring there, but didn't see anything too weird. There's more on the Haunchies on this discussion board. Haha, someone even used Haunchyville in their geocaching game! That sounds like an awesome place to have an outdoor show. Haunchyville could become our Woodstock.

Making the switch

No, it's not about my sexual orientation (sorry, boys) but about my email service.

I've been using Yahoo! Mail Plus faithfully for the past two years and while it was a good application, I've decided to move to Gmail. If you've been emailing me at mike at sunspotmusic [dot] com, then you probably didn't even notice, but just in case you were wondering why I would do such a thing, here's my reasons:

#1 - As I need to use Outlook at Epic, I was syncing my Treo with the calendar and contacts there, the Outlook -> Yahoo synchronization is several years old and fairly unreliable, so I was wasting time every few days syncing back and forth between the two and having to manually check each item changed. Timewaster and I hardly even check the Yahoo calendar because of the Treo.

#2 - The Yahoo PIM(p!) applications have been slow as fuck lately, so it takes me forever to change something simple in the calendar or the address book.

#3 - Yahoo Mail Beta is cool but buggy and is slow as Hell on Firefox. If you think I'd go back to IE, in the words of the mighty Priest, you've got another thing coming.

#4 - Yahoo was coming out with special applications for every mobile phone out there, except for the California-born and bred, ass-kicking, simple to use yet unbelievably powerful Palm OS. Fuck Nokia. Symbian is crap. Google hasn't made a Treo-specific application yet, but they did make a Java Gmail app which I can use on my phone. They're making an attempt and I appreciate that.

#5 - Gmail has a ridiculous amount of space that I don't have to pay $20 a year for.

#6 - Yahoo's tech support is non-existent. I'm paying for a computerized support system that has no idea of what my problem is? Horseshit.

#7 - They both sold out to the Totalitarian Chinese government by volunteering to censor their search engines, so that's a non-issue.

#8 - Yahoo Groups, which made it useful to stay on there, hasn't been updated since Windows 98 came out. I feel like I'm burning whale blubber for light when I'm working in it.

Anyway, I'm paid up on Yahoo until May, so I'll still be receiving messages to that account until at least then and I can always go back if Gmail turns out to be lame (lack of folders is a tough one for me, we'll see how this label shit works.) I'm working on my systems here, I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for the final convincing, Dino, if you're wrong I'll have your head.

And if you found this blogpost boring, I'll be available for balls-sucking in either Chicago tomorrow or Cincinnati on Saturday.

RIP Young Frankenstein

Peter Boyle died today. :(

Didn't I already make a "Fuck Wells Fargo" post?

Probably, but I'm doing it again. Their customer support is a fucking joke, they don't know who the fuck I am in their system even though I have a mortgage with them and their reps don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. They must hate their jobs, they really must hate them, because they fucking suck at them. Why else would you be so fucking stupid in your line of work? Is this your job? You couldn't find anything you were good at, so you joined the ranks of customer service? Well you should find different work because your obviously out of your motherfucking league.

These jerkoffs keep on calling me saying that they have information about my issues with them, they leave a message for me to call back, I do and then no one knows why I'm calling. Like it's a great big mystery... "I'm sorry this is an inbound call center". Okay, then why the fuck did you call me and tell me to call back at that number if we had no reason for conversation. Plus, I waited on hold for ten minutes while you assholes were "assisting" other customers. Fuck off. Eat shit and die.

There is no oversight of these companies that suck ass. It's caveat emptor, I know it's my fault for not investigating mortage companies enough to find one with decent service, but I can't handle the ineptitude. As financial instititutions, these assholes own us, they own all of us because of debt, housing, loans, etc... and they're fucking idiots. It's like being owned by a bunch of monkeys. We let the goddamn inmates run the asylum. I hope that they all have horrible Christmases and that they die of something nasty like the Hanta virus.

Jaggernauts

Jaggernauts
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

will crush your head with a crowbar!

A fruit I actually like!?

Clementines.

That's right... As part of my recent attempt at a healthier diet, I've been trying some different fruit. I rediscovered the wonderfully delicious clementine, which looks like a mini orange. It's citrussy and sweet like an orange, but it doesn't have all that nasty membrane crap found in an orange. Plus it's WAY easier to peel.

Are these things even good for me? They taste way too good to be healthy.

WIBands Bus Tour Pics

We saw a bunch of bands on Saturday night as part of the second WI Bands Bus Tour. We started out at The Klinic, but also hit The Zuzu, Hody, Club Tavern, and Warehouse Stage. Saw some fun bands and had a great time. For proof, here's Animalien's pics from the night and here's Joe's pics from the bus tour as well. There's some classics in there, plus some ones that should have never seen the light of day, but whateva...

Here's some of my favorites:






Ben looks fuckin' wasted there.

Russian UFO Story

Looks like Ben got it to load, but I still can't. Here's what it said:

Russian news agencies reported that an identified flying object has fell from the sky in to Siberia district.

Russian news agency RIA-Novosoti has reported that an unidentified flying object has crashed on Krasnayarsk area of Siberia this morning. The crash caused a small forest fire.

The object crashed on an area exactly between Yeniseisk and Lesosibirsk towns in Krasnayarks. Authorities were informed by the residents of the area immediately. Russian Air Force authorities said there were no registered flights detected in the area at the time when the object was crashed.
Siberia Emergency Team sent a helicopter to the crash scene for further investigation.

UFO Crash News Story

I saw this link to a Russian news story about a UFO crash in Siberia on Drudge this morning but I can't get the story to load for me.

Has anyone else heard anything about this?