Put the final touches on my second Munny this weekend. I think it came out pretty cool, even if it was just a couple of spray paint applications with some simple brushwork. Next time I will work on my spray painting technique. It’s tricky to keep it from running.

Now I have a Mini Munny Mobile I need to start working on. Fun!

We’ve replaced the carpet in our house with very similar, but very new, carpet. The houses on our street all date from the mid 1950’s so the assumption has always been that there was decent hardwood flooring under there. The rub, for us, was that we didn’t know the age of the existing carpet plus our…less-than-diligence…about keeping spillings to a minimum. Plus, we had a dog, two cats, and two babies on this stuff so we had no idea what we were working with. We were very, very pleased to see that the carpet was preserving, as opposed to hiding, the floor underneath.

We’re looking forward to the day, in 10 years or so, that we pull up all of the carpet and get the floors refinished. Until then, however, feel free to come over and enjoy the deep pile.

Michelle, my lovely wife, had a birthday this past Friday. Here we are enjoying a flaming Volcano cocktail at our new favorite flaming cocktail establishment, Tiki-Tiki.

The building I work in is across the street from the Federal Court building here in Richmond so I had a good view of the mini-circus that broke out last week when Mike Vick showed up for his initial hearing. I took some (crappy) photos when I went down there to check it out at lunchtime. Keep in mind that this was 3 full hours before Vick was due to show up.

(you can click through any of the photos to see them larger, but the Treo doesn’t give you much to see)

Here is the line of people waiting to get a seat in the courtroom. It’s open to the public but seating is limited and it’s first-come-first-seated so people started lining up around 10 am. It was mostly press but there were some civilians in the mix. Lucky for them they were in the shade.

This was odd. The cameraman on the left (yes, the one with the camera) kept panning from this guy’s Vick-model Nikes to his face. Clearly just for some stock footage to run while a random news anchor gives the latest Vick trial update.

The tv truck situation was silly. There were at least a dozen of them. This street was closed just so they would have a place to park.

I didn’t take any photos of the animal rights folks there to boo Vick, or the people that were there to counter the Vick-booers. I didn’t understand those people, though. Is there a vocal pro-dogfighting community? Why would you show up outside of the Federal Courthouse to make that case. Seems like the worst place you could do that.

I didn’t know about Tim Armstrong until the first Rancid album but it didn’t take long for me to go check out his previous band Operation Ivy where there were plenty of ska influences to be found. In fact, the second half of the Rancid catalog is based on the Jamaican riddim at least as much as it’s based on the Clash.

Apparently, Tim was going to release a number of reggae singles as a thank you to Rancid fans but the popularity of the first one, “Into Action” (which you will hear below) caused him to rethink the project and just put out an album, “A Poet’s Life“.

To me, reggae music is Summertime music, and this is reggae to the core. Backed by his buddies, L.A. punk/reggae band The Aggrolites, Tim just has to sell a convincing reggae vocal, which he pulls off 90% of the time. There are some weak moments but nothing that kills the album for me. It’s just a good time.

Here’s the video for “Into Action”. Honestly, it’s worth the purchase price of the album by itself.

And here’s a video for “Hyena”, one of my favorite Rancid songs. It’s got the swear words edited out, but the vibe is still good.

Oh man, I need to stop trolling YouTube. Here’s the “Nihilism” video. Another fave.

“From Here We Go Sublime” by The Field is the highest rated album on Metacritic this year and I am not sure why. It’s certainly good, if you’re into electronic music (especially trance or ambient, or whichever branch of the electronic tree this fruit falls from). I just don’t see what props this above any other offerings. Good for The Field that they’re getting their name and their music out there, I just wish i knew what it was that made it so noteworthy.

“From Here We Go Sublime“ is the one I’ll host because it contains a sample of one of my all-time favorite songs, “I only Have Eyes For You” by the Flamingos. Damn, I love that song. I should find a copy to host for you. More on that soon.

This post was supposed to be about how awesome my new iPhone is. Instead it’s a reminder to all of you dudes out there to check the specs of new hardware to be sure you can use them.

So…when do are the new iMacs supposed to hit? The new keyboard looks sweet.

The new John Reis (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes) band.

This is huge news for me. Speedo is a personal musical hero.

the new band has me on lead vocals and gar doing lots of backups. the sound is a combonation of everything I’ve been a part of dating back to my prepubescent days in pitchfork. similar to hot snakes but not as sinister yet still maintaining some of the drama and subsonic boom. akin to the rockin fun of rftc but without the same kind of riffery. like the sultans but not as straightforawrd yet still maintaining the sense of melody and pop of the 2nd record. occassional nods to the flamin groovies, real kids, byrds, boogie rock era status quo, bo diddley, chess records in general, wipers, michael yonkers and shuggie otis are evident to me.
the name of the band is…………………speedo

Many thanks to Mr. Eades for the heads up.

A vendor gave us a candy bowl here at work and they send a monthly package to fill it with. This month we got two big bags of bubblegum.

Fantastic photo.

You should go read what the guy had to do to get the shot. Good stuff.