I was indoors at home when all of a sudden I hear this "eek eek eek eek eek eek" sound coming from outside, but then it abruptly stopped. Then my wife goes "nononono, get away from that squirrel!" I look outside and sure enough, my two dogs are poking at this greyish lump of fur on the grass, which I assume is the squirrel. Clearly no movements from it, so I was guessing that it was already dead. I go outside and squirted the dog with water to get them away from the dead squirrel. Our white dog seems to understand that it's off limits, but the brown dog wasn't moving. I bend over with a trash bag to pick up the poor squirrel, when my brown dog suddenly picks it up with her mouth and walks away from me. She must think I'm trying to take her "toy" away from her. I squirted her away with water again, picked up the unfortunate squirrel and got rid of it, before the brown dog decides to attack the thrash bag that contained the squirrel this time. Oh yeah, in addition I also had to pick up the tail of the squirrel that was severed from it's body!!! Poor squirrel.

On a totally unrelated note, I was on the radio Monday morning, calling in about "experiences from The KROQ Weenie Roast." The DJs totally caught me off guard, because right after the phone screener put me on hold, I had maybe no more than 10 seconds before they got to my call. I did not have time to formulate my thoughts so I had to stall a little bit with the standard "hi guys, how's it going?" before actually going in my subject. I think I came off not sounding too much like an idiot, so it's all good. That wasn't the first time I was on the radio with the Kevin & Bean show too, but it's always a nice cheap thrill for me whenever I get to do it.

Random Barricade

expert says children should be banned from playing Wii Fit (link)

Anti-drug dog - NSFW language (video)

Bill O'Reilly's Producer - NSFW language (video)

Japanese String Movies (video)

things younger than John McCain (link)

emergency party button (video)

Girl Fails GED, Dad Jailed for 6 Months (video)

the facts of life (video)

Cats On A Treadmill (video)

2008-2009 TV season schedule (link)

The 2008 KROQ Weenie Roast Y Fiesta music festival is done and over with, and it was absolutely great great great! I did not go for the whole show, but I did check out the live streaming webcast for the first couple of acts. By the time I did arrive at the show, it was around 4:30PM and apparently the parking lot was completely full. They made us park on the street; which was maybe only a few 100 feet away from the actual parking lot, and so they did not charge us the parking fee. So far so good. Entering the venue, the first thing me and my friend noticed was all these hot girls in skimpy outfits, and it's really all thanks to the day being so hot. I went over to the merchandise booth to buy a Weenie Roast t-shirt, but unfortunately they were all out of Large at that time, so I did not bother getting a shirt. My friend also went ahead and got me a drink as thanks for the free Weenie Roast ticket I won. It was only appropriate I suppose, since he was the very first person at work that I knew also loved Metallica.

We went and took our seats right in time to watch Pennywise, and they rocked the house! Awesome set list, and I finally took a vid of my favorite song of theirs "Bro Hymm," since I finally ignored the urge to sing along this time around. Bad Religion was up next, and they are great as usual. They played a good mix of old and new stuff, and I thought it was kinda funny that people thought lead singer Greg Graffin looked too much "like some teacher" to be in a punk band, especially considering that he is in fact a lecturer at UCLA.

Rise Against performed next, and while I'm not a fan of the band, I do like their singles. At one point when they were playing an acoustic ballad, a brawl actually occurred a few rows in front of mine, and the lead singer thought it was funny that something like that would happen during a slow song. The Raconteurs was next up, and just like the previous band, I'm only really a fan of their singles; and even then just so-so. The crowd also seemed to feel the same way, because they really weren't into the band either. I took that time to go visit the restroom one more time before the Offspring / Metallica combo comes up, and a funny thing happened. I was maybe the 15th person in line to enter the restroom, when all of a sudden this big huge shirtless bruiser of a guy filled with tatoos all over just casually walks past a line of 40+ guys and cuts to the front. Ofcourse considering the size of the guy, no one was willing to tell him to go back in line. If it wasn't brawls or tough looking guys in this concert, there were also a bunch of people illegally setting up makeshift bonfires at the lawn area of the venue. Funny stuff.

After a long hiatus from touring, The Offspring are back, and they kicked ass! They played a great mix of their most popular songs, as well as a couple of new songs. The crowd was really into their performance and sang along with the band enthusiastically. Unfortunately at that point of the night, a lot of people opted to stand up more than seat down, which meant that my viewpoint of the stage for my picture/video taking with my camera was quite obstructed. Despite that, I did attempt to take some video recordings of their two newest songs, and when watching them on youtube, you may just want to listen to the song. Maybe it'll be better to just watch one of the video cuts from the KROQ webcast which I'm sure somebody will upload.

The mighty Metallica closed the night with one of the best performances I've ever seen them do. Playing almost nothing but their classic popular songs, it was a killer set. The crowd however wasn't the typical Metallica crowd, in fact there weren't a lot of black shirts in the audience which is very "un-metal-concert-like." If you look at the band list, the whole Weenie Roast was really
primarily filled with punk bands, so Metallica themselves kinda stood
out despite being the headliners. Around where I was sitting (standing), I felt like the lone guy saying the "hey heys," "masters," "die die dies," "nah nah na nahs," etc... that is customary for a lot of the songs Metallica plays live. At one point, lead singer / rhythm guitarist James Hetfield asked the crowd to raise their hand if this was their first Metallica concert ever, and I swear that at least half the crowd raised their hands. I suppose I really shouldn't fault the crowd too much, considering that the 1999 Weenie Roast was my first Metallica concert (I did not go to many concerts until I was well into College already). For the most part the crowd was definitely into their show, and I'm betting some of them were just like me back in 1999, when I decided I was going to be a Metallica fan for life after finally seeing them live for the very first time.

Despite this not being a "full" Metallica gig (there were no black outs in "Fade To Black," or pyros in "One," etc), that did not stop me from singing along and head banging to my hearts content though. Speaking of which, I haven't sang that loud or bang my head that much for a very very long time, and my age is showing because my throat, head, and neck are quite sore right now. Instead of the scheduled original alloted time of 1 hour 30 minutes, Metallica played a little under two hours long, which is pretty damn cool since most of the other bands only got 30-45 minutes sets, while the Offspring only got an hour. Metallica had two encore sets, but a lot of people thought there was only going to be one. After the first encore many people began to leave, in fact it was probably half of the crowd. I almost left, until I realized that the house lights weren't turned on yet, which usually means that it's not over. I was happy to see that despite the fact this was a radio concert, Metallica still did their 2nd encore set, much to the surprise of the people who've never seen them live before. So all the way until the end for me, and it is always well worth it.

When I got home, I took a shower from all the beer and marijuana/cigarette smoke that I've been engulfed in, and had a late late dinner. Afterwards I went on the Metallica club message boards, and apparently they were all watching the live webcast, while posting messages to each other about it during the show. Some of the members were watching all the way from Europe, and for some of them the show ended as late as 7AM! This was kind of a historic moment for Metallica to perform literally to the whole world, and it's all thanks to Microsoft xbox sponsoring the webcast and KROQ for bringing us one of the best Weenie Roast they've ever had (as well as a kick ass webcast).

p.s. I spent practically zero dollars for the whole thing. Free tickets. Free parking. Did not spend money on food, drinks, or merchandise. How cool was that?

* Photos taken at the Weenie Roast Y Fiesta! *

* youtube videos will be uploaded sometime in the next day *

As I'm writing this, I've been awake for almost 30 hours now. If you remember my previous blog post, I was having a hard time waking up since my alarm clock broke. Well, I still needed to pick up the KROQ Weenie Roast tickets I won, and I had to drive 40 miles to Los Angeles to pick them up, between 10AM - 4PM. I had only until this past day (Friday) to pick them up, or end up relinquishing my winning. Well, normally I would be asleep around that time since I'll be coming off a graveyard shift, so that would be a problem. I decided to just simply stay awake to avoid losing those tickets. They are great tickets too, and this will be the closest I've ever sat to the stage at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, CA.

With lots of coffee in me to stay awake, the trip there wasn't too bad with the KROQ building not being hard to find. I was hoping to at least be able to go inside the building and possibly meet the lovely hot receptionist Janelle, or maybe some of the radio personalities. Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be as easy as walking a few steps from my parked car and to a booth outside the building that held the tickets. *sigh* so much for the free personal tour. Traffic going there was a little bit of a drag though, making that 40 miles drive last 1 hour and 15 mins, while the drive back home only took about 40 minutes. I did see a surprising sight when I was nearing home though, a huge plume of smoke coming from a brush fire a few miles away from my place. Exciting stuff, but not really.

Well Weenie Roast is today, and I'll be going with one of my Metallica buddies. I'll do a report on that tomorrow. Now time to go to sleep.

Random Personal

the perfect night (video)

Manny's High Five and Throw Out (video)

Sue Simmons Drops F-Bomb - NSFW language (video)

parallel park (video)

historical blockbuster video store (video)

Jessica Alba The Stare (video)

Star Wars The Clone Wars movie trailer (video)

what if Nintendo made Halo 3 (video)

hot girl maps (link)

R.Kelly : Trapped In A Courtroom part 1 (audio)

For the past week or so, I've been sleeping later more so than normal. I set my alarm clock at a certain time, but I would never really wake up to it. It's like my body instinctively turned it off without me even knowing. I would wake up based on when my body wants to wake up, which is usually after six or eight hours of sleep. Because I'm unable to wake up earlier, I end up missing some free time to do things that I had planned to do before going to work (like going to see a movie for example). I was ready to blame my sleeping-in situation to getting older or just being tired. I honestly was starting to get worried at how unreliable it has been for me to wake up on time. However I just solved what the problem was. My alarm clock wasn't working anymore, because the buzzer is pretty much dead... hah, and here I thought there could have been something seriously wrong with me...

While I was at work almost three hours ago now (4AM), I had this conversation on the phone that I will not soon forget...

Me : (dialed number, phone ringing, waiting for somebody to pick up)
Person : KROQ
(short pause)
Me : uhm, what number am I?
Person : You my friend are caller 20!
Me : What?! No Way! Sweet!

That's right, if you haven't guessed by now, I won two tickets to the KROQ Weenie Roast Y Fiesta Music festival! Usually I get that busy signal or a *ring* "caller9" *click-hang up*, but when the phone screener answered "KROQ" and had a pause afterwards, for that second there my mind was going "wait, this is different, I did not actually win did I?"

Tickets don't even go on sale until tomorrow, and I already know I'm going to be able to go. Sure I have to drive 80 miles round trip to pick up the tickets from the promotions department at the radio station, only from 10AM-4PM, Wednesday to Friday, but hey, that's okay, because I do work the graveyard shift and have that free time in the afternoon to get the tix.

Wow, I'm going to the Weenie Roast! Metallica, the Offspring, Pennywise, Bad Religion, etc... oh yeah I'm excited.

The Random Ghost Of Genova Heights

undercover shoppers on M-rated games (link)

Obama's Def Political Jam (video)

he climbed Mount Everest... (video)

pants gymnastic (video)

Afghanistan Firefight Heard On Voice Mail (link)

new polo (video)

what men are really thinking (video)

Nike: Take it to the Next Level (video)

draw yourself as a teen (pix)

dino-run (game)