Boooo!! It's that time of year again. I'll be dressing up for the first time in at least half a decade tonight to go to Megan's Halloween party. I'm not going to get to go as what I had originally intended to because due to my illness this week, I was unable to get out and find the necessary pieces to the costume. Too bad too, cause it was gonna be a good one. I think I'll end up going as a rock star since I have plenty of shit around the house to do that one. Hopefully I'll take some good pictures tonight and get some posted later this weekend. But for now I'm going to pop in some Black Sabbath and head home. Have a spooky ass Halloween.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 5:34 PM

It looks like I'm going to survive, and without having to have any surgery to boot. It seem even though I had almost all of the symptoms of Appendicitis it turned out not to be so. Basically my doc told me my intestines were blocked up like a storm drain during the flood of '93. Yes, I'm talkin bout poo. I can tell you were all dying to know. Anyway, he told me to drink some Milk of Magnesia and the "damn" would break. I feel a hell of a lot better today although I'm still not back to 100%. That should come with a little time though. Unfortunately, I didn't have any bowel movements worthy of Ratemypoo.com. I suggest giving that site a visit if you are interested in being totally disgusted. As if you weren't grossed out enough as it is.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:26 PM

On a lighter note.... The St. Louis Blues beat the Detroit Red Wings in Joe Louis Arena for the first time in forever and ended Detroit's all time home winning streak of 15 consecutive games. Not to mention that Doug Weight got a hat trick and Dallas Drake racked up five assists. We now sit on top of the division by three points and we are about to play 10 of our next 15 games at home. And we're doing all this without Barret Jackman, Al Macinnis, Scott Melanby, Brice Salvador, etc, etc..... Not a bad start I'd say.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:53 AM

Ok so today my symptoms didn't get any better. I ended up going in to work today and felt pretty much fine all day. I didn't puke or have any horrible pains but I decided to call my doctor around 1 PM to see if I could get in today or tomorrow for an appointment. I talked to a receptionist who said that she would have someone call me to discuss my symptoms. His office didn't call me back until like 5 PM though. So after I told the nurse on the phone my symptoms she talked to the doc and called me back once again. She said that his recommendation was to go to the emergency room and tell them of my symptoms and that they would start running some tests to be safe. Seems like a good idea except that by then I started feeling slightly better and that going to the emergency room with a stomach ache means that you are pretty much just gonna sit there for like 6 hours and have to pay 500 bucks to get some tests done. So I decided to tough it out.

That.... might have been a bad idea. Over the course of the day I had been looking up some possible illnesses according to the symptoms I have. A lot of the signs pointed towards Appendicitis although I seemed to be lacking a few of the most important symptoms. Well, turns out at about 10 PM this evening those particular symptoms I was lacking started to pop up pretty rapidly. I think there's about a 85% chance that I do have Appendicitis and so I may be spending my Halloween under the knife of a surgeon rather than the knife of a poorly dressed and mildly drunk Grim Reaper. I'm gonna try to stick it out for the night and go to a gastroenterologist tomorrow and get some tests done. If I get any worse tonight though, I'll be heading towards the ER. Wish me luck, because I'm a big fat cry baby when it comes to hospital stuff. Hopefully I'll be posting again tomorrow morning, but if not, you'll know where I am.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:46 PM

I didn't go to work today cause I was sick as a dog. I spent a good portion of the morning puking up bile. Not a very pleasant experience. I had been having some abdominal pains over the weekend that I figured were just gas pains or indigestion. Apparently it's something more than that. My mom thinks I may have a gall bladder infection due to the fact that I was tossing up bile and that gallstones and such run in her family. So it looks like I'll be off to the doctor sometime this week. Right now I am entering about 200 receipts into my Quicken account on my computer where I do all my banking. It's almost as painful as the puking.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:37 AM

MTV please stop in the name of all things holy!!! Apparently MTV is again going to make another crappy movie for theatrical release. This time its a documentary about one of the most overrated musicians (if you could call a rapper a musician) of our time, Tupac Shakur. You know, I'm all for rock stars being wild crazy eccentric mo-fo's but this is nuts. Too many people are glorifying the life of this ghetto thug. A "rap sheet" (no pun intended) that includes, murder charges, sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon, etc, etc. Most of these charges on more than one occasion. So anyway, hopefully you see my point.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:01 PM

Hey stock watchers out there, it looks like Google will be making its IPO early next year. Now that the "Dot Com" boom looks to be officially over with, it seems safe for a company like Google to hit the market and it seems it will do so in a big way. It's estimated that the stocks will be in high demand and may raise the value of the company from $8 billion up to as high as $25 billion in one year. Hmmm.... might be a good time to make my first foray into the stock market.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 9:44 AM

Hot Damn!!!! I just won around $400 buckazoids at Ameristar Casino St. Charles. SCHWEEEET!!! Here's the key..... play the quarter Jeopardy slots and start with about 50 dollars. Don't give up on your machine either, just stick with the same one. The last three times I've done that I've never left with less than a hundred bucks in my pocket.

Also, congrats to the Florida Marlins for beating the piss out of the Yankees bitch asses.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 3:16 AM

I heard back in late September that New Line Cinema was going to run a Lord of the Rings Marathon the day before the third movie The Return of the King opened. Basically, a select few movie theaters in each city across the country were going to show The Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition) at 1:00 PM, followed by The Two Towers (extended edition) at 6:30 PM, followed by the stateside premier of the last movie The Return of the King which would start at midnight. To say the least I was pretty excited by this notion and was considering buying tickets. Unfortunately, the tickets went on sale October 9th and I was unaware. Apparently they sold out every seat for each theater in less than 20 minutes! I checked on E-bay to see what I could track down there without much luck. There seems to be a lot floating around out there for other cities but I only found one available ticket for the St. Louis showing and it was already up at $105 bucks with a few days still remaining on the auction. There were a couple I found in both Springfield, MO and Springfield, IL but that's a long way to travel to sit in a theater all day and night and then have to drive back. I guess it could be worst though. I could be attempting to get tickets in Hollywood, New York City, or Washington D.C. where tickets were going for about $500 a pop.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 2:12 AM

Baseball.... It's almost done for the season and I know I've talked about it a lot already on this site, but this will be the last time until the spring. I just need to get some last thoughts in here concerning the playoffs.

First off, we had the makings of what could have been one of the most historical World Series match-ups ever, Cubs vs. Red Sox. And now, due to the cruel hands of fate, we get one of the most boring. Yankees vs. Marlins? Lamesville, population: The 2003 World Series. Seriously, nobody outside the New England area, with the exception of some bandwagon jumpers who just want to root for the team that wins all the time, ever want to see the Yanks in the series. They've been there enough already. If I ever become a Billionare, I'm going to buy the Yankees and make them suck for a decade. Marlins?, hardly anyone in Florida cares about them much less the rest of the country. There were a few Cardinals games down there this year where they had only about 6000 fans in the seats and 4500 of them were Cards fans. It's sad really. So bottom line, I could care less about this series. I suppose I'm rooting for Florida, but only because I don't want the Yankees to win it again.

Let's backtrack a bit now. NLCS game 6..... You already know what I'm gonna talk about right? This Guy...... Steve Bartman. I would rather have a hot oil enema than be in this guys shoes even for a minute. Not because he cost the Cubs a world series birth, but because most Chicago fans apparently don't understand baseball very well and they certainly aren't forgiving. Steve, move away from Chi-town now or I doubt you'll live to see next season due to some of the most irresponsible media coverage in history. But before you go take with you this knowledge backing up the fact that you DID NOT cost the Cubs a trip to the world series:

1. All you did is reach for a foul ball. Was it stupid? Yes, but 95% of us would have done the same damn thing. At least 10 people around you did the same thing. It wouldn't even be an issue if the ball was 10 inches more into the stands or if the wind hadn't been blowing the ball back onto the field.

2. If memory serves me correctly, the pitch count before that pitch was 3-1 and after it was 3-2. So in essence you actually helped Mark Prior's pitch count. It was Prior that walked the batter right after that. He still had his chance to get the man out but he failed. Not to mention that it would have only been the second out of the inning not the last.

3. Moises Alou even realized that he over-reacted to the situation not to mention the fact that he said he would have done the same thing had he been sitting in that seat.

4. Your gold glove candidate shortstop Alex Gonzalez botched an easy little league ground ball that could have ended the inning.

5. After you touched the ball, the threat of "The Curse" began to creep into the minds of the Cubs players. After that, it was just a complete mental meltdown for Prior and the rest of the team. To maybe have allowed one run off that lost out is acceptable, but not eight.

6. The harsh ignorance of the Cubs fans helped to change the tone of this game more than anything. The attitude of winning and cheering on the team quickly changed to violent mood of despair. Instead of helping your team shake it off by just dropping the situation and cheering them on, you booed and chanted profanities. Way to help your team out Cubs fans.

7. How about the fact that the Cubs still had to play a Game 7, at home, with a Cy Young quality pitcher on the mound?

Cubbies, I was actually rooting for you to win. I would have liked to see that Cubs vs. Red Sox series, but after you lost the series after being up 3 games to 1 with two of the best pitchers in the league going for you in the final two games at your house, I realized you didn't deserve it. Not to mention the fact that most of your fans showed their true ignorance that game and that Dusty Baker (you know the manager that can't win anything beyond Game 5 in a series) refused to absolve "the fan" of any wrongdoing. Admit it and be a man, you and your team blew it just like last year. BTW, here's a good place to go laugh at the Cubs misfortunes.

Now the Red Sox losing that's just crazy. That's the kind of shit that actually makes me believe that both these teams really are cursed. Each team was five outs away from the Fall Classic and each team had a three run lead late in the game but you both blew it?!? Spooky, man. It's just not right.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 2:25 PM

So last weekend I got a ton of stuff done on my first half day off in almost a month. Went out and ran a bunch of errands and paid some bills, etc. I also went out and bought some cool new threads at Express for Men at West County Mall. $350 bucks worth to be exact. Not counting the summer clothes I bought before I went on vacation this summer, that's the most I've ever spent on clothes at one time. I also got a new Western Digital 120 GB Firewire & USB 2.0 external hard drive to put all my media files on. I already have about half of the CD's I own copied to my 80 GB internal hard drive but its starting to eat up a lot of space. Now I can get all of them copied to my new external drive and free up the space on the other one for programs and such. Since the hard drive is external, I can now basically carry every CD I have in a box the size of a small paperback book. I can take this bad boy over to my friends houses and let them copy some discs to their computers or burn a few straight from my drive as well. So hey, if anyone out there is interested in doing some music swapping let me know!

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:51 PM

It's quite possible that "I Love The 80's" on VH1 is the best program ever produced on the MTV networks. Watch it and reminisce, hilarity will ensue.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 9:14 PM

Whoo.... It's been a long couple of weeks, but I think the worst is finally over. Work has been hellish here at P.S.S. Eight huge shows in ten days is quite stressful on the old Operations Manager. Yet, the show must go on, and well they all did. With the utmost success I might add.

Anyway, here's my first post of many that I had been promising. I'll make it quick and easy.

Here's a link Liam found for an Artificial Intelligence game that is actually pretty damn cool. Try your best to trick it by using items related to sex. Enjoy!

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 9:49 AM

Due to the fact I've been working my ass off the last week or two I've had to lay off posting for the past few days. But there's a ton of stuff floating around in my head that I've been meaning to write about. Don't worry, new stuff is coming soon.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:18 AM

Whooo-hooo!! U2 announced recently that they have a new album coming out next year and will also tour in support of it. That's awesome news for a huge U2 fan who's missed three chances to see them live due to circumstances beyond my control. I can't wait!

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:31 AM

I really hope people are checking out the songs that I have made available for download. After all that's why they are there. Like I said previously, as soon as I get some more web storage space I'll probably do some sort of top ten or something like that.

Here's a little bit about the newest addition to the list.....

Gavin DeGraw - Meaning: In my personal opinion this one is the best song off his debut album, which was actually a tough decision. I can listen to this album all the way through without skipping any songs and that says a lot. This one however is the stand out for me. A really great radio friendly pop song, but with depth, good melodies, and rich layered instrumentation. Plus some of the notes he hits in this one remind me of a young Van Morrison or Billy Joel.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:20 AM

While I was making some eats the other night in the kitchen, I was flipping through channels on the tube since there were no good sporting events on that night. I stopped on VH1 which is part of my regular channel flipping rotation. I caught the beggining of this show called "The Fabulous Life of....." which is esentially just like "Lifestyles of the Rich and The Famous". The host even sounds like Robin Leach. Anyway, it highlights things like how J-Lo spends 5500 bones on face cream that is created by the leaves of some plant that only grows on one mountian in Kuala-Lampur and how 25 villagers had to die to make that one bottle, and how one of the dudes from In-Sync likes to drink this special 2500 dollar vodka flown in from Russia weekly and hand made from golden potatoes which are only touched by the skin of a virgin, and how when he wants to take a vacation, P Diddy rents and entire cruise liner and staffs it fully and sails to a secret island with 100 hot college aged bisexual women aboard. Ok so I exaggerated slightly, but I digress. The episode I caught was "The Fabulous Life of Victoria and David Beckham"

Most of you probably don't have a clue who either of these two are and I wouldn't really expect you to. Victoria is formerly of the pop group "The Spice Girls" (aka: Posh Spice or as I called her, the hot one) and David is the worlds biggest and most recognizeable athlete (Here are some pics if you're interested). Bigger than Jordan, bigger than McGuire, bigger than Warren Sapp (not in size though cause Sapp is a big-fat-fatty). "How can this be?" you may ask yourself. Well it's quite simple really. David Beckham plays soccer, a sport that people in the US don't give two fat shits about. But the rest of the world well thats a different question. This guy may indeed be the arbiter of coolness. The James Bond of the sports / pop world. He's bigger than Michael "crazy man" Jackson was at the apex of his career if you can believe that. People do some crazy shit all in the name of this guy. He has a movie named for him (you may have heard about "Bend it Like Beckham" this summer), Buddhist monks in Thiland have erected a gold statue of him that they pray to daily (that is not a joke), and one obsessed woman went through every room in a hotel at which he recently stayed and licked every toilet seat just so she was sure she licked the seat that his ass was on (I swear I'm not making this shit up). Now, while that shit is just a bit overboard, the guy is apparently a pretty classy fellow. Kick ass athelete, relatively shy and modest, rich as hell, and the posterboy for metrosexuals everywhere. He and Victoria are the Marylin Monroe & Joe DiMaggio of England in the 21st century. I kind of hate the fact that I am even posting about this since I am typicaly not the sort for celebrity worship, but I was pretty impressed to say the least.

Update!!! Here is a link to an article confirming that there really is a statue of David Beckham in a Buddhist temple.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:07 PM

BTW, congrats to Mizzou for beating the hell out of Nebraska for the first time in 24 years.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:32 AM

Whew, that was a long weekend. After my long and stressful day at work on Friday I decided to run home, shit, shower, and shave and then head down to the Majestic to have some drinks and watch the hockey game. Unfortunately since the Cubs - Marlins game was in extra innings I had to watch on the little tube above the bar. Whilst watching the game I argued with Dave Mach about how I thought that a Cubs - Red Sox world series would be interesting and about how he thought I should be banned from St. Louis for saying that I would like to see the Cubs even win a game. That was a fruitless argument as I should have known from the beginning. (Never engage in an argument about sports, music, politics, or religion with someone whom you couldn't talk about philosophy or literature with, especially if they have been drinking) Anyway, I then won two game of darts to round out the time at the bar. Later on I headed back to Pete's house to drink a few more brews and watch The Two Towers on DVD. After staying out way to late at Pete's, I ran home and hit the hay around 6 AM.

On Sat I woke around 9 AM after a measly three hours of drunken sleep and then headed off to work. At noon we had to load 2 fifty three foot tractor-trailers full of gear to be ready for a load in the next day for a huge concert we are producing in Alton, IL. Twas some hard work, but at least I had plenty of "shop monkeys" to help me out. We didn't finish until around 5 PM. Normally after a long day at work with a very few hours of drunken sleep I would go home and take a nappy poo before heading out for the evening. But alas, I could not. I had a wedding to attend. So I ran home and got all cleaned up and headed out. I ended up not going to the actual wedding since it was at 6 PM and I didn't even get home till around 5:45. But the reception was nice and the food and free drink are always a welcome break after a long day at work. Stayed for the whole reception and then had to run back to work in my suit for about an hour to get some equipment from one truck to another. Luckily one of my shop guys, Kevin, had brought a friend with him to help out so I didn't have to do any work while I was in my fancy schmancy suit. While they were finishing up at the shop I headed over to the Billy Goat Bar across the street to catch the last few songs of The Drew Johnson Band. I must say they are pretty damn good. I have heard Drew perform in solo acoustic mode before, but never with his new band. They closed their set with a kick ass cover of "Helter Skelter". After all was said and done at work, I made a run for the border and then headed home to eat and pass out.

Sunday I actually got some decent sleep for once, but I still had to go into work. Helped Karyn move a TV from her aunt's house on the way in. Got to work about 5 PM and busted out all the shit we needed to get done in quite a hurry. Even got the shop all cleaned up and everything back in place as well. Came home about 9 PM just in time to watch the Blues beat the Avalanche and eat some grub. Probably gonna do some fun stuff now like balance the old checkbook and pay some bills. Exciting.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:40 AM

Man I'm an ass kicker!! I had my busiest and most stressful day at work in probably a year and still got all my shit done in a timely and organized manner. I also still managed to get out of there only an hour later than usual. Now its time for brews n' Blues and a little relaxin before I go back to work in about 12 hours or so.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 8:57 PM

I'm so slammed at work right now I think my head may explode!!! Gotta run for now. At least I can look forward to the first Blues game of the season tonight in Phoenix at 9 PM on Fox Sports Net!!!

Later kids

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 3:24 PM

My sister is now officially a resident of the "Windy City". My parents and my bro helped move her up there over the course of last weekend. My folks took out a lease on a pretty two bedroom apartment inside a two family flat about 15 blocks from Wrigley Field. They furnished it from floor to ceiling including the second bedroom and the sun room. Everyone who's seen it so far has said its a pretty sweet pad. I'm planning on heading up there sometime before it gets freezing cold in Chicago, but sometime after the Cubs get eliminated from the playoffs. So my window there is pretty short.

Anyway, she moved up there to attend Columbia College and major in acting (or possibly film) and take some classes at Improv Olympic. I think eventually she is interested in trying out for Second City which is a comedy troop that produces a shitload of well known comedians. Pretty much all of SNL passed through their doors at some point. Hopefully she'll get hooked up with Nick Vatterott at some point and they can roam the city together making people jolly. Good luck Katie!.......Or should I say, "Break a leg"?

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 3:40 PM

Sorry I've been slacking with the short posts lately. I've been busy at work as of late, not to mention the fact that I've been intoxicated during most of my time off due to the old birthday and all. Hopefully I'll resume posting tomorrow at work since it will be the one slow day before the big two week rush of shows we've got going on. See y'all then.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:11 AM

And so it begins.....Do you bleed Blue?

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 7:29 PM

Wow, I am now "Google-able". What a birthday present!

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 4:29 PM

And now, I am officially old.....

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 2:23 PM

Here's a little bit of info about the two songs currently listed under the "Music of the Moment" feature:

Rufus Wainwright - Go or Go Ahead: This is by far the best song off his new release "Want One". It has sort of an epic feel like that of a majestic classic rock song. It sounds somewhat Beatle-esque in a way. Maybe a little of an Elton John feel as well. In the latter part of the song as the music picks up it gets more current sounding, like that of a "Bendz" era Radiohead or an "Urban Hymns" era Verve tune. A damn fine song.

Dishwalla - Angels or Devils (live): This could be one of the best live acoustic renditions of a song ever. I know that as a bold statement, but give it a listen. JR Richards voice is crystal clear and right on over the simple piano that carries the melody. He hits every note to perfection, possibly even better than the studio version with the entire band. Simply put....Beautiful.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:31 AM

This right here is some pretty cool stuff......I can barely draw a square with an Etch-a-Sketch.

Thanks to Nicko for the link.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 4:30 PM

Liam was right. I went to Dave and Busters the other day and ended up playing some simulated batting cages. The ones where there's a huge video screen in front of you with a pitcher throwing balls to you. The bat has a sensor on it that lets the computer know where you are swinging at. Close enough to the real thing I suppose, at any rate close enough to give me a stiff neck and sore obliques.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 4:05 PM

Schweeet. You may have noticed some new items in the sidebar on the left. Got some links up yesterday and this morning I added my newest feature, the "Music of the Moment" link. This lets you, my blogger guest, download a song that has caught my attention recently, one that I certainly think is worth sharing. I will probably change the song once or twice a week or whenever a new great song pops up.

There are a few bugs with it right now though. For one, you have to right click the link and use the "save target as" function in order to download the file. You can't stream it for some reason. Probably because I am hosting the file on Geocities. Which leads me to my next problem which is file size. Since Geocities only lets you upload files smaller than 5MB, this file is in 96 Kbps Windows Media Audio format to reduce the size.

Hopefully soon, I'll work out all the bugs and get some real web storage space so I can put multiple songs up there at once. Or even a whole album. Maybe I'll do a Top 10 sort of thing. At any rate it works well enough for now. Not bad for a guy with no web programming experience eh?

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:28 PM

I was pretty worried this week about my fantasy football team since four of my players had a Bye. So I dropped them all and started shifting shit around to get the best team I could out of it. I think I doubled my point potential by doing that. I now have the #1 and #2 WR's in my league (Randy Moss and Anquan Boldin), the #4 and #5 RB's (Tomlinson and Williams), picked up Gus Frerotte from the Vikings who threw 4 TD's last week vs. San Fran (in for Dante Culpepper this week at QB), and I picked up a top 5 defense as well. Not to mention the fact that every player on my team but one is facing either New Orleans, Dallas, or Atlanta (sans Mike Vick) this week. This could make for some interesting numbers come Sunday.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:21 AM

Baseball is in the midst of the playoffs, the football season is only 4 weeks old, hockey season starts in less than a week, and I just got done watching a School Bus Demolition Derby on ESPN-2. I guess it's a growing sport?!?

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:58 AM

This post by Nick reminded me of something that I have been needing to get off my chest. Everyone makes "Top (insert number here) Lists" for all sorts of different topics. Especially in the arena of entertainment. These lists about music or movies or whatever are always subjective and usually suck. Sometimes, you'll get one that hits the nail on the head and you'll feel elated that someone actually agrees with your taste. Such is not the case with Rolling Stone's - "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. This might be one of the worst Top anything lists ever. They got #1 right and that's about it. Here are a few major screw ups....... #12 - Kurt Cobain of Nirvana (Way, way, way too high. Very influential musician, very creative and talented as well. Not a great guitar player though. Anyone ever heard a Nirvana guitar solo? It's like 4 notes). #17 - Jack White of the White Stripes (Again, way, way, to high. This guy has had two or three albums come out and he makes the Top 20. Please. He's a power chord guitarist). #18 - John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Tooooo high! I love the Peppers and Frusciante does have and original style, but it kinda sounds like a 16 year old in his first year of guitar lessons). #70 - Eddie Van Halen (WAAAYYY too low!! Huh? Is this a joke? Van Halen at number 70? That right there ruins this whole list.) # 82 - David Gilmour of Pink Floyd (Too low. Ok, so he wasn't the fastest guitarist on the planet, but he wrote some of the most memorable solo's of all time. And besides maybe Santana, I don't think anyone can quite bend a note to perfection the way Dave Gilmour can). #91 - Robby Krieger of the Doors (Too low. Man this dude could play some weird shit. From straight up blues, to these odd eastern and Spanish sounding scales. He deserves a little more credit than that). By the way, where's Slash from Guns and Roses? Or Neal Schon from Santana and Journey? How about Lindsay Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac? Man this list sucks.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 12:20 PM

Three things I'm doing before I get married or too old to enjoy: Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street, Spring Break on Daytona Beach, and The Burning Man Festival in the middle of nowhere.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 2:07 AM

I've purchased 9 new CD's in the past 20 days or so (10 if you count the one double disc). That's a lot of music. But so far, so good. In fact these might be some of the most satisfying albums I've purchased in a long time. On September 9th, I went out and got the new John Mayer CD, "Heavier Things" the night it came out. I just happened to pick up three more while I was there as well. Gavin DeGraw's debut "Chariot", The Thorns self titled debut, and some classic stuff in the form of The Rolling Stones "40 Licks". All of which turned out to be most excellent selections. I can't go in to too much detail about each one right now, but here's the rundown:

John Mayer - Heavier Things: I'm sure most of you have heard "Room for Squares" by now. If not, get it. If so, get this one. To sum it up; more sophisticated than the first; less DMB, more Sting; less pop, more experimental; less acoustic, more electric. This one will grow on you. I was disappointed after the first listen but every time after that got better and better (apparently this phenomenon occurred with the other John Mayer fans that bought this as well).

Gavin DeGraw - Chariot: Take two parts Billy Joel, two parts Van Morrison, add a teaspoon of Stevie Wonder, a dash of Elton John, a sprinkle of Bruce Hornsby, and top off with the current pop sound and sensibility of John Mayer, and BAM!! you've got your self a top notch piano playing singer songwriter who's on his way to the big time. His first single ("Follow Through") should be hitting mainstream radio soon, but watch out, the rest of the album is even better.

The Thorns - The Thorns: Hmm.... are Crosby, Stills, and Nash writing songs under a new moniker or is it just the fact that Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins, and Matthew Sweet have a serious knack for old fashioned 1970's American folk rock. Probably the latter choice there. Three solo acoustic pop guitarists get together to form a great folk pop/rock band. The vocal harmonies are crazy good and the songwriting is excellent. For a second there I thought I was on my way to Woodstock, NY in a VW van circa 1969 when this was on my car CD player; then I realized I was just on my way home from work.

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks: Uhhh I don't think I need to explain this one. Umm how bout this..... the only collection of Rolling Stones songs ANYONE will ever need. Unless you are the kind of person that wants to lick the sweat off Mick Jagger's leather pants.

The other five disc's I just bought two days ago, so I can't really comment on those yet. But I promise I will soon for all you music lovers out there. In the mean time these should give you something to look in to while I give these newest five a few listens. But like I said earlier, so far, so good.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:23 AM

Even though the Cubs are in the playoffs but the Cardinals aren't, they are apparently still battling one another off the field. A war of words that had begun back in early September between coaches and players on both sides has now escalated to a boiling point thanks to none other than, you guessed it, Steve Kline. If this continues on and off through the off-season, I'll be first in line to buy tickets for the Cards vs. Cubs games next year. Looks like the old rivalry is heating up again. Now that the Cubs can actually compete with us.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:13 AM

My commenting system is back up, but unfortunately all comments made before about 11 PM on 9/30/03 are gone for good. Not much I can do about that.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:50 AM