Random story

Saw Pinback and Enon at Bimbos last night. It was an awesome show! I need to start going to more concerts, just like the old days…

I found this picture using Lee’s new search interface to his photo album:

It’s pretty cool because it shows how dorky I am: wearing glasses, playing video games in a hotel. Yes, there’s an interesting story behind this.

The guy sitting next to me is my friend Lonnie (picture). In addition to being a super-cool guy (and earning my eternal gratitude for introducing me to American Analog Set and reintroducing me to the Lips), he’s also the most prodigious spender I’ve ever met.

When we were working at IBM, he and our other friend Brian lived on the top floor of a swank Boston apartment building, paying what must have been around $3000/month. Between them they had a 57″ HDTV and two 36″ TVs. (For the less mathematically inclined, that’s more TVs than they could sensibly watch at once.) Brian had a 400-disc CD changer despite having only 10 CDs. Lonnie bought a saxophone and an organ, even though he didn’t know how to play them, because he thought they were cool. (He also happens to be awesome at guitar, and owns a good half-dozen of those.)

So basically this meant that it was incredibly fun to hang around with them, because you never knew what they were going to get next.

One time we were going down to Southbury, Connecticut for a couple of days to participate in our group’s annual kick-off event. Since we were all going, this promised to be a fun time (and in fact we did end up doing fun stuff like playing water polo in the hotel’s pool), and Lonnie and Brian hatched on the idea of bringing their XBox down so that we could play at the hotel.

Good idea. Most normal people would stop there. However, they were driving down and back in Brian’s Ford Explorer, which mean that there were going to be four hours during which they couldn’t play on the XBox. So they decided to buy a TV to bring in the car so they could play on the drive. Let that sink in a second: they bought a TV for the car ride. Yes, this is true.

Ah, but ye olde cigarette lighter — even the one in a powerful, masculine, I-guzzle-gas-like-real-men-guzzle-beer SUV — couldn’t hand the load of powering a TV and the XBox. So they bought this $70 battery thing that could supposedly provide the juice.

We set off, and all went well… except for the fact that five minutes into the trip (before they had even left Boston), the battery couldn’t handle it and blew itself out. Now this might deter the likes of you or me. Not Lonnie, though — he just stopped at MicroCenter and picked up another battery thing. It was an awe-inspiring performance: two $70 batteries and a TV, and all for a drive to Southbury. I know time is money, but I never realized it was that expensive. I love those guys.

I don’t even remember if the second battery survived, but we did play in the hotel, as you can see. I think in the picture I’m getting my ass kicked at Halo or something.

(Note also that next to the XBox controller was my form of extravagant entertainment: a pack of cards. Yes, I too am a practitioner of debaucherous hedonism.)

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I love reading the best of Craig’s List. Most of my favorites are decidedly unprintable, but I will include a few good (and relatively kosher) ones here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Rant: My Crazy Girlfriend
The Union Station Bike Pilferers
Rant: God pooped on my day
Chat room…
Rave: My OCD ex-girlfriend

And an actual nice, touching post about guys:
Ode to men
It warms my heart.

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Life can be so complicated. Luckily, there’s Grant…. and other small things. Not that Grant is small. Actually he’s huge. Rephrase: “and other things that, unlike Grant, happen to be small”.