eventhesky got some TV time!

Go watch it here.

There's some good shots of me and the band mixed in with Riley's story. If you listen close, you can hear us playing Led Zeppelin's "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?" in the background. There's even a shot of Brittany, her dad Chris, and Tracie Greene.

Awesome.

Debbie Downer

Don't call me Debbie Downer.

People are all in a tizzy about Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, and Farrah Fawcett dying this week. Listen, I read Perez Hilton occasionally. I read about stupid celebrity news every now and then. But how did we become such a celebrity obsessed culture? Why do papparazzi have a job? Why are there so many magazines at the check-out counter at Target and Kroger that are almost 100% about celebrities and their lives and their homes and their cars and their stalkers?

I just don't get it. Its a curious thing.

The World Water Council will tell you that 4,000-5,000 children die every day of preventable waterborne diseases. Every day.

Most people don't give a damn about it. But I can't go anywhere without hearing about freaking Michael Jackson or Farrah Fawcett.

We spend $450 billion on Christmas every year. Every year. It would take about $10 billion to provide every person in the world clean water--that's not a bottle of water. That's the cost of setting up clean water wells and purification systems. And it would only cost us 1/40 of what we spend on Christmas every year.

I'm not perfect. I'm to blame, too.

What happened to us?

How can thousands and thousands of people die every day of preventable diseases and lack of food and we not care? But the "king of pop" dies and that's all I can read about on news sites.

I just don't get it.

RIP

We've shared a lot of good times together. You were always there for me. No matter what I did to you, you were always there providing cool, refreshing liquid to my lips. I'm gonna miss you, Brunton water bottle. You're dented, scratched and peeling--but that doesn't mean I love you less. Its just time to move on to a Nalgene.

Spain (part 2) (just photos)

Spain (part 1)

Planes are uncomfortable. I'm 6'3". I'm not a small dude. Aisle seat or not, its still nearly impossible for me to sleep on a plane. So I just stayed up. Since we left Thursday afternoon and lost 7 hours in the flight, we arrived Friday morning in Madrid. Brittany slept around 5 hours and I slept none. But its hard to be in a bad mood when you just stepped off a plane into one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

The rental car? A VW Polo (which I referred at as the "Pollo" all week). I didn't realize how fast I drove it all week since everything was in kph instead of mph. Turns out I was driving that tiny little car around 100 mph on most of the interstates. But I digress...

We spent our first two nights in Madrid at a hostel. I know what you're thinking: A hostel? We didn't share rooms. We did share a large common room and bathrooms, but we had private sleeping quarters. It was nice--(fairly) clean and in a great location. We went out the front door and down the block to the metro station and could get anywhere in the city in less than 15 minutes. We went to the Prado museum and it blew me away. There were paintings from Goya and Velazquez and El Greco and Raphael and Botticelli and Rembrandt and Carvaggio. There was so much to see it was overwhelming.

In Madrid we also visited the Royal Palace (el Palacio Real), the Retiro park (Parque del Buen Retiro), Plaza del Sol and Plaza Mayor. There was lots to do and lots to see. We talked... a lot. I had bought a pair of Chaco sandals before we left and wore them the entire time. They do what they promise. My feet stunk at the end of the day, but atleast my knees didn't hurt.

On Sunday we made the 6 hour drive to Barcelona. Brittany slept a lot. But the countryside was lovely and the drive was quite nice. We had rented an apartment for the 3 nights in Barcelona and that was a decision we did not regret. The place was amazing--extremely modern, chic and simple (it looked like it came right out of an Ikea catalog). The property manager was German and moved to Spain a while back so he spoke 7 languages and was really informative when it came to things to do.

Barcelona was my favorite city. It wasn't as huge and fast paced as Madrid (which reminded me of New York) but there seemed to be more to do. The Sagrada Familia was a few blocks from our apartment. We went to take some pictures and had dinner our first night there on a terrace right beside it. The Modernist architecture alone is worth a visit to Barcelona. It influenced so much--from hospitals to apartment buildings to churches to parks. In Barcelona we toured the Cathedral (amazingly huge), the Palace of Catalan Music, the Church of the Sagrada Familia, the Picasso museum, and Parc Guell. The Picasso museum was incredible in that none of his most famous works were on display there. It showed Picasso's works from pre-art school all the way up until his last pieces. There were charcoal and pencil sketches, early landscape paintings, Blue period, Rose period, pre-Cubist and Cubist paintings, copper plate etches, posters, magazine doodles, and pottery. It was really interesting to see the scope of his talent. The Parc Guell was designed by the same guy who designed the Sagrada Familia: Antoni Gaudi. There were mosaics and curvy lines everywhere. He built these two houses at the bottom of the park and inlaid them with colored mosaics and spires --they looked like life-sized gingerbread houses. The whole park was eye candy and was one of my favorite places.

More to come soon... (as soon as I quit being lazy and write it all up.)

PS-I'll add pics and such ASAP.

"I teach Sunday School..."

Was reading some thoughts on the existence of evil, Satan/Lucifer/the Devil/etc, and such this week and came across a reference to this video. I had never heard of Zimbardo's book ("The Lucifer Effect"), but this interview is very interesting, and in the end, hilarious...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Philip Zimbardo
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

I hate to say it...

but he's got a good point. He's not "slamming Obama" as the video title says, but his comments are excellent criticism.

Thoughts?

eventhesky

I hope that if I keep pushing the idea of us being a real band, we'll turn into a real band. We just need to figure out what kind of music we wanna play and quit doing cover songs. That might take some time, though.

I made a Facebook fan page and created a Myspace music page for us. You can check them out if you'd like.

On a Tuesday...

I've been slacking. I know. I haven't written any posts about Spain. Several people have said something at this point. I'll start on them during the day on Thursday. I'm busy today.

Its the last day of my life that my left arm will ever look like this:



UPDATE:

Wes Carter got the outlining done on my tattoo today. I'll go back for color/shading once this is healed. I absolutely love it.