Mushroomhead story

So I was sitting around our new fire pit tonight trying to come up with something to blog about when I thought why not just do another Eric story, so I will. I kinda figure since I teased everyone about the time One Breath opened for major metal band Mushroomhead I would tell you about it now. First however I’m sure some of you may not know who Mushroomhead is so I’ll tell you.



Mushroomhead is a heavy metal band that is originally based out of Cleveland, OH. I guess they are technically industrial metal. One of the distinguishing features about them is the fact that most of the members wear masks. This has caused some controversy among fans of Slipknot because fans of both bands claim they stole the mask idea from each other. Personally I don’t care because in my opinion both bands are great. Mushroomhead has been on movie soundtracks and on MTV’s “Headbanger’s Ball” so needless to say this was a huge deal.

Now this was a hectic day to say the least. The night before we had played at the exact same venue as a last minute replacement opening act for Prong, another major metal band whom have been cited as an influence to such greats as Jonathan Davis of Korn and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, so we luckily did not have to worry about loading and unloading our gear. However, the band had asked for us roadies to go in and help Mushroomhead unload early in the morning, alas of all five or six of One Breath’s roadies I was the only one to show up. Anyhow I went in and helped them unload the trucks and help a little bit with setup and then went home.

Later on for some reason or another we were running late for sound check and we had to literally run into the venue in the rain and start setting up while the band members tried to find parking spaces. Well we made it in time and after some major hustling and teamwork among the roadies we were ready for the sound check in no time.

Well One Breath played their set and then while the second opening band was playing their own set we went “backstage” and brought along our two VIP guests my sister and her friend. You see the venue they played in was an indoor driving range called the Golf Dome and with a full sports bar in it. Well the backstage area was the driving range and while we were back there we got to hang out with Mushroomhead without their masks on and got to hit some golf balls with them and just generally shoot the breeze with them.

Well when it was time for Mushroomhead to go onstage we left and went to find a place to stand. Luckily we decided to stand on the side because when Mushroomhead got on stage the entire bar was a mosh pit literally from wall to wall nothing but a mosh pit. My sister had to climb on top of a speaker with the help of our bass player because it was so intense.

Well after everything was all said and done and the crowds had left we were talking to the band and they were saying that they were impressed with our band. They even went as far as to give us a few pointers on some of our songs.

Well after our conversation and all we loaded up our gear and headed home for the night.

Random Bachelor Card of the Day:”Tell to chicks you’re getting married, and ask them to fulfill your last wish as a bachelor: to see a little girl-on-girl lip-locking action.”

I would defiantly take that dare or at least watch while someone else does the dare.

If you would like to see a Mushroomhead video just click here and it will take you to a You Yube music video of their first single.

668 Words.

Drinking Off the Job While At the Job

Well first off let me just say I had a great time at Poker night and look forward to the next one. For those that read my blog and don’t know what I’m talking about, tonight the community group I am a member of, The Phoenix Projects (http://phoenixprojects.org), put on a poker night as a fundraiser. Anyhow one of the things that makes me happy is the fact that for the past few poker nights we’ve had I didn’t have enough chips at the end of the night to get this little dragon sculpture that I needed to even out my collection. You see on my dresser I have three big wizard sculptures and two little ones and until tonight I had three big dragon sculptures and only one small one so it was a little unbalanced, but now that I had enough chips I was able to get the dragon that had eluded me for months and balance out my collection.

Ok now that that’s out of the way and I still have more words to type I guess I’ll tell another Spee-D-Foods story. This story only involves two other people besides me; my pretty cool co-worker who I’ll call Bruce and a frequent customer by the name of “Wayne”. Well Bruce and I had been working together and closing together for a few months, and he was I pretty cool guy. Well one day he and I were closing and a few punk kids came into the store paid for about 60 dollars worth of gas made a huge mess in the restroom and left, without pumping their gas. So here we had some kids who left without getting the full 60 dollars of gas. Well the night went on and the kids never came back for the money. Well at the end of the night we have to makes sure there is no purchases pending on the register. Well we had to clear out the refund in the register. Since it was closing time and it had been about five hours since the kids trashed the restroom, we decided to accept it as a tip. Looking back I know I should have taken it out set it aside and left a note for my boss, but that’s not what we did.

So at closing time Wayne was in the store and Bruce and I decided we’d spend our tip on some Smirnov Ice. We each got a six pack, and after our work was done we clocked out and while waiting for the registers to produce the paperwork we went over to the tables that were set up for eating hot dogs or whatever and the three of us started drinking and bs-ing for about an hour. Little did we know that this would be Bruce’s last night there. The next day he was fired for smoking weed out the back door. So I guess it was kinda fitting that we did that the night before, after all how many people can say on the last night they worked at a job they got drunk? The best part was the store manager never knew about that night or, if he did he didn’t care.

Random Bachelor Card of the Day:”Pour a Prairie Fire (tequila and Tabasco sauce) down the hatch.”

Wow what a fitting card for the story I just told! I don’t think I could handle that though since hot stuff doesn’t exactly agree with my throat.

581 Words

A night with the Knight

Wow I’d have to say this is the earliest latest I have posted since it is starting to go on 4 AM. Anyhow though the reason I’m still up at this time is I just got back from a late night hanging out with The Knight.

We started out the night, after dropping off my sister with Rook, by going to see the new Terminator movie and I must say I’m impressed. I loved the fact that they were using stuff like fighter jets, helicopters and what not because it makes sense. In all the other Terminator movies and the show, which will be sorely missed, they never show the resistance using any vehicles other than a submarine in the future. The other cool thing about the movie was that they sprinkled in little things for the fan boys.

After the movie we went to check out a local sports bar called Overtime to try and do some karaoke, however by the time we got there they had finished hosting the karaoke and were just playing music. That was fine for a little bit. There were few girls dancing around but considering the type guys they were hanging out with, a couple of guys that thought they were gangsters complete with low pants and ball cap on weird, they were not my type and was paying more attention to the other room that had more possibilities. Heck where we sat we didn’t get the normal waitress; the normal waitresses were wearing black ball caps, white tank tops, tight black shorts, black socks, and white shoes while ours waitress had on jeans and an Indians jersey (I kinda felt gyped). Well anyhow while we were there the music they played actually devolved. They started out playing 311 and within about 5 songs went to playing some poor excuse for a rap song that talked about nothing other than “booty shakin’” so when the Knight yelled over the music if I wanted to go get something to eat I quickly said yes.

So from there we went to Denny’s mainly because it was going on 2 in the morning and nothing else is open. After we were seated our waitress came up to us for our drink orders and I swear she had a Charisma of about 19 or20. We had various discussions ranging from Midsummers to comic books (man I love being a geek). Well anyhow it was here that I learned something I never knew, people in about their 60’s are funny when they are drunk. It was funny because they were acting like they were about 30 years younger. This one lady was so drunk she was flirting with a guy in another booth and even went to sit next to him for a few minutes. Then another more sober elder lady was complaining to a pair of cops that were trying to leave about people in some bar selling alcohol to drunken people. We ended up leaving at this time and so were the poor officers. I could tell that they took the ladies compliant lightly. After this we just ended the night.

The funny thing is I tried to start this blog at 4 AM but was so tired I laid back onto my bed after doing a few of these “iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” and got back up to continue it at about 9 AM which is why I’m so glad that I do post early in the morning otherwise I would’ve been out of this competition long ago.

Random Bachelor Dare Card of the Day: “Circulate the bar and offer to trade piggyback rides for free drinks. (If a guy wants a ride, he better make it a double.)

Wow that sounds like a quick way to get drunk for free, although I may have to limit myself with it due to my back not being the best.

650 Words.

Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and the countdown.

So today made the decision to watch a program on my DVR today that I had been skipping over because I only recorded it to see the tail end of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Fuse. Well I still missed the end of the concert but I figured since it was a number one countdown show of Hall of Fame artists I figured what the hell I’ll watch it anyway. It was very interesting considering I ended up singing along to every video even the Madonna “Vogue” video. Well while watching it I noticed a few things about most of the videos or songs that I didn’t notice before. So I figured I’d go ahead and list the videos to the best of my memory and give my thoughts on them. So here goes.

The number ten video was Queen’s Under Pressure (aka the song that Vanilla Ice ripped off for “Ice Ice Baby”). The one thing I did not know about this song was the fact that Queen had a very special guest vocalist on this song, the one and only David “Ziggy Stardust” Bowie. The sad part was after knowing that Bowie sang background vocals on the song I did hear it but up until that point I thought it was just Freddie Mercury.

After that the next one they played was, I think, was Prince’s “Little Red Corvette”. Yes that’s right Prince is in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame he was inducted alongside such great acts as ZZ Top and George Harrison in 2004. Now don’t get me wrong I enjoy his music, heck “When Doves Cry” is one of my all time favorite songs, but I just had no idea he was in there.

The next video they showed was “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash. Wow this was defiantly an 80’s video I mean I remember when it was in high rotation on MTV but seeing this and then seeing newer videos it just amazes me. The thing that caught my eye was the fact that the video was starting to remind me of a bad joke, “So a Rabi and an Arab are driving around Texas …” wow the 80’s were great, we didn’t have to worry about being politically correct.

The next one was “Vogue” by Madonna. All’s I can say about that video was I completely forgot how hot she was when she was younger, but now that she’s in her 50’s she’s more plain looking to me. Then of course who can forget the infamous cone bustier with what looked like she stuck two ice-cream cones to her chest.

After that they finally got back to rock with “Back in Black” by ACDC. Now this whole show was taped at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame annex in NYC and throughout the show they showed various displays. Well before this video they showed Angus Young’s school boy outfit. I found out that he first put it on as a dare and the crowd liked it so much that he made it his gimmick.

After that they played was the song “Drive” from one of REM’s best albums. Although I think they could have chosen a better song from it I would have picked either “Everybody Hurts” or “Man on the Moon” but whatever.

Now the next song they played was a true classic Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” What little I saw of this video, thanks to my sister’s dog insisting on shutting my singing up by attempting to attack my face and ears with her tongue, was that I could swear that the dancers in the club were doing the thriller dance. I mean you’d think he’d have come up with something different.

The number three song they played on the countdown was another 80’s classic “Walk This Way” by Run DMC and Aerosmith. The funny thing is this version was almost never made. Run and DMC didn’t want to cover a rock song, but Jam Master Jay convinced his band mates otherwise and the rest is history.

The number two song on the countdown was “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2. Seeing this video made me realize how much intestinal fortitude Bono has. He saw that the cops were going to shut down the concert before it could even start so he just says screw it and starts playing anyhow until the cops finally get to the roof of the building and make him go.

Then they saved the best for last, “One”, by Metallica. I just love this song and the video is amazing. I just loved how when they were inducted into the hall of fame they included Jason Newsted as part of the band even though he quit the band almost ten years ago. One of the rumors I heard was that they offered Dave Mustane to be inducted with them since he was the original rhythm guitarist but he declined because “he was going to be out of the country”, but I think it was just because he’s still holding a grudge against Kirk Hammet. Oh and one final thing that caught my ear was the host comparing Kirk Hammet to George Harrison.

So that was my viewing experience I’d love to hear what you all think of the songs or videos.

Random Bachelor Card of the Day: ”Find a scary, muscle-bound guy at the bar and challenge him to an arm-wrestling match (or just ask to take a sip of his drink).

Yeah this is one of those that I’d love to watch someone else do it but I wouldn’t want to do it.

949 Words. Sorry it was so long but once I get into talking about music I sorta loose track.

An intro to One Breath.

Wow so now the contest is down to the final four. We have Stray Hairs whom writes some lengthy blogs that are pretty interesting, then you have The Priestess Warrior who also writes some long ones that are interesting oh and by the way since you like dragons keep your eyes glues to my Dragon God story because after a while you will definitely see many stories with them in it, after that we have the Hobbit she is a wonderful person whose blogs I love reading and am happy to so I am good friends with her, however the final competitor is me and I don’t plan on loosing I don’t care if during the middle of the night I have to sneak over to the college and use their Internet to post during Midsummers since from what I have been told we are still required to blog during Midsummers but we will see. There was a rumor going around that during that weekend we would be able to call a truce, and that’s one rumor that I hope comes true.

Well enough of my babbling on about my future victory. Since I’ve had so much fun telling you all about the different stories of my past I figured since today was a boring day I’d do another Eric story. This one deals with when he was in a great metal band by the name of One Breath. One breath was starting to become a really great band with a huge following when it came down with the fatal disease known as Lead Singers Disease. Lead Singers Disease is a common band killer it happens when the lead singer’s head just keeps on growing and growing until it pops. That is a sad day because everyone has put hard work into the band however the singer thinks that he can just run the band booking shows without consulting other band members.

Now before anyone asks me no I do not play an instrument or sing , I was the drummer’s (my best friend Eric’s) own personal roadie, drum technician, and so on. Basically I would set up the drum set and test the microphone levels on them as well.

Seeing as I only have a few more words left I’ll do a brief talk about when they opened up for the band Mushroomhead. Yes that’s right they opened for them in the in the same place that was starting to become a normal place for them to play. Well I’ll tell you the full story another day since I am falling asleep while writing this.

Random Bachelor Dare Card of the Day: “Offer to buy a drink for the first girl who delivers her thong to you.”

Not sure if I’d want that dare or not because I’m not sure I’d want it after she was wearing it that’s kinda gross.
482 Words.