Elizabeth and Dan arrived in Japan this morning where they will be teaching English for the next 12 months. As such, we need to give her a warm weelcome to the "Blogosphere" while she keeps us all up-dated on Sushiliz. They'll be back next August, so my soccer team is down 2 people (not to mention the fact that Jean moved to Kentucky which actually means we're down 3 people), but the fact of the matter is that she and Dan have this great oppritunity to see Asia, so be sure to wish them well.
Jason has been in town this week, &, as always when we get together, we spent a lot of time this week watching extremely shitty television. For instance, we caught an episode of Crazy Mark TV on Community Access the other night. Now, I've seen a lot of shit in my day, & while crazy mark is no Christopher Saint, his show sucks. Be sure to check out the show when you get the chance. Furthermore, you also need to watch The Show of Shows. It comes right after Crazy Mark TV, both in time-slot & in quality. This is a show where people submit their own films, which could be alright, except one was just a close-up of Santa Clause snow globe for 5 minutes. After The Show of Shows, we treated ourselves to Rock of Love & The Rock Life. I am interested in he way they found the women for Rock of Love. Where do they get a group of women so fucked up that Bret Michaels ends up looking intelligent & classy. The blond chick w/ the pink streak in the middle of her head is hot, but even Pam Anderson needed more than just hotness to make her show work. As far as The Rock Life goes, those freaks deserve a show like Visions of Ypsi deserve a fucking Pulitzer. Cisco Adler, the son of Lou, may have the lowest hanging ball in he history of low hanger, but they're still miles above his musical talent. Of course, there's also Tony Potato, the band's manager & former lawyer, & current horrible comedian, who displays even less talent throughout the show. They set up a stand-up gig for him & the fact that he thought he was funny proves how unfunny he is. "Hack" isn't even the right term for his routine. I honestly thought he was retarded for the 1st half of the show, but it turns out he isn't... he just sucks. And now, what you've all been waiting for... Cisco Adler's low hanging balls:
While the dim-witted Carl Spackler ironically did not drive any golf carts, a small group of us got together last night to watch Caddyshack on Stacey's enormous new TV. Neither Georgina, Matt nor I had seen it in years and Stacey had never seen it before at all. I picked up a VHS copy at a garage sale a month ago for 10 cents so it made sense that wee should finally watch it. It is actually better than I remembered, but Rodney Dangerfield still doesn't do much for me. His humor always seems so forced. Chevy Chase & Bill Murray, on the other hand, are as fantastic as ever. Carl Spackler & Ty Webb are funny mother fuckers. Not to mention Ted Knight who was, of all things, the narrator on The Super Friends... who knew?
I haven't done this in a while, but since Steve was nice enough to hook me up w/ a ticket to Dave Mason on Saturday, I wanted to give him a little shout out. Why Dave Mason plays Brighton High School, I have no idea, but he rocked. He only played for an hour & a half, but that 90 minutes was sweet. Having been a huge Traffic fan for ages, I was so excited & he didn't let me down. His set list was, I'm sure, the same list he plays for every show, but "40,000 Headmen," "Dear Mr. Fantasy," "Shouldn't Have Took More than You Gave," "Feelin' Alright," "Only You Know and I Know," "All Along the Watchtower," & (if I remember correctly) "Pearly Queen," were great. Some of his more recent songs are a bit weak though, like this country love tune, "Every Woman," which seemed to be a crowd favorite, but it just grated on me. The lyrics are soooo fucking cheesy and cliche. All in all, however, it was a great time. I wish I could have seen Steve Winwood when he came through town a couple years ago though; my love of Traffic stems from him, but Mason is definitely cool as Hell. See him if you get the chance. Not only was his performance spot-on, but apparently, he's also making the guitars and basses hey are using... other than the Fender he used for a few songs. And, as I learned from Steve & Dave the other night, he played on Beggars Banquet & Hendrix's version of "Watchtower." Pretty sweet!
Well, in traditional celebration of Link Day, we're going to Izakaya Sanpei in Canton tonight. It will also be a nice farewell to Elizabeth & Dan as they are moving to Japan this month to teach English. If you've never been there, I would highly recommend checking it out. It's a great Japanese place... not your run-of-the-mill steak house or sushi bar, but a full-on, authentic restaurant.
Not to be out done by the festivities tonight though, Solstice is having her first sleep-over party next week. With 7 or 8 of her friends running around all night, it's been dubbed by Stacey as "Gigglefest," & I'm a bit worried that I may have gotten in over my head. She & her friends seem to be looking foreword to it, but she keeps claiming that at sleepovers, everyone has to stay up all night. I certainly hope that doesn't end up being the case, but I guess we'll see.
Last night's Tiger's game made 2007 my first multi-game season since 1984. My sister called me about 3:00 to tell me she had a couple free tix & since Jean & Dan already had tix, we made it a nice family outing, particularly since they're all moving away this month. The game sucked though, unless of course you're an Oakland fan. It was the second loss I saw this year, & thinking back to the 1984 season, I never saw a win then either. Seeing as they all had their heads inserted miles up their asses, we left during the 8th inning & headed up Woodward to get a beer at the Garden Bowl, the bad & bowling alley which resides within the Majestic complex. We had a couple beers & were preparing to go when some knucklehead calling himself "The Millionaire" (not to be confused w/ Ted DiBiase) started passing out slips of paper for some good old fashion karaoke. We continued to drink our pitchers of Miller Lite when Elizabeth decided it would be a good idea to perform "I Walk the Line." She was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the bartender who saw fit to break out "The Humpty Dance." That was pretty sweet, as was the woman who sang "Creep." She went nuts on the "so fucking special" part & inserted a few little references to Detroit. As for myself, I had considered doing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" or "We Built this City," but the former was taken by the very first person to sing & a group of people did a different Starship song so the latter wasn't really a god idea after all. In the end, as it had been a long time since I sang in public, maybe it was fitting that I finally got up there and belted out "Like a Virgin." complete w/ cock rubbing & groin grinding. By 1:45, we were all able to agree that a shitty night at the ballpark ended up pretty well & a good time was had by everyone.
Our little compound 
Viewing the dunes from the beach
Climbing the DunesSun. morning, before making the drive to Petoskey, we climbed the Dunes. I hadn't been there in over 20 years. The climb wasn't quite as easy as it used to be. Some of you will claim that it's because I'm older & fatter, but I'm going to say it's because the dunes have grown about 40 feet & become much steeper. The last time I climbed the dunes was w/ a soccer team from Woking, England who were in town to play some games w/ the Petoskey high school team. I suppose I may actually be older & fatter than I was then. I'm not sure though. After an ice cream break, we drove to Petoskey via The Ironton Ferry. In order to take the ferry, one needs to go about a half hour out of one's way, but the kids loved the idea of driving onto a boat, & so did I. This is something else I hadn't done since I was a kid. This began our sojourn into Hemingway country. In fact, some of the Nick Adams stories take place right by here the ferry is. The other Hemingway connection this weekend came on Mon. when we went w/ Elizabeth & Dan to Walloon Lake. Hemingway's childhood home was on the lake... as was mine (from 2-4 years old). I showed the kids the house I lived in & we swam for a while in the absolutely beautiful lake. Elizabeth kept saying how shocked she was that it was so beautiful. She even went so far as to claim it looked like the Smokey Mountains. And she's kind of right. Considering how often people claim they hate the mid-West, I have to say that over the last couple weeks, we've seen some cool shit w/in 4 hours of Ypsi.
The view from the FerryWhile in Petoskey, we also drove around the old hood, went to Pirate's Cove, & ate at La Senorita. Again, my kids had a great time. They also had a great time on Tuesday when we went to the fish hatchery in Oden, about 10 minutes north of Petoskey. It is a really cool place w/ an nice educational bent. The got to learn all about fish populations, woodland habitats, & pollution. After lunch at The Big Buck Brewery in Gaylord, where the wait staff knew nothing about the beer (the extent of their knowledge seemed to be that the lager was like Budweiser & the red ale was like Guinness... ridiculous), the educational tour continued w/ a stop at Hartwick Pines State Park in Grayling. It's based around an old growth forest so we got to learn more about conservation & the environmental effects of poor land use. We then ended the day back at Stacey's dad's place where we went out in the pontoon boat and cruised around the lake for a while before we all crashed pretty early. All in all, an exhausting vacation, but a great time was had by all.
My Old Home Place
At the hatchery
