There's Something In The Air Today, Makes Your Worries All Just Melt Away

Miami ended up being an awesome time. The team, Grant, Chris, Matt, Mat, Sarah and myself, left at around 4 with directions to the apartment of a few members of the Miami improv team, The Tower Players. I drove with Matt and after a few bad driving choices, we were on track to getting there by about 7:15. The show started at 7, so we needed to head straight to the theater, so we needed to figure out how to get there. We asked a few pedestrians and we made it there around 7:30. No problem since we were scheduled to go on at about 9. We got to relax, eat a few brownies and watch the Miami teams. They were all very entertaining and good at the art of improv.

We met a few team members outside, Ben and Angie, between shows. They were very friendly and very nice, I hoped that all the Tower Players would be so welcoming. We did our show and considering it was a new environment and a totally new crowd I think we did a solid job. It could have been better, specifically the edits could have been tighter, but we got a good response. After our show and another Tower Players team (they have a lot of members and a lot of teams) we met a few more people and they were all just as cool. This was a big relief as it seemed like everyone else we saw on campus was just the biggest stereotypical preppy college kid, sweaters around the neck, cargo shorts, etc.

After the whole thing was over, we headed back to the apartment where we would be partying and sleeping. I got a little nervous when it was just one guy, Matt, and a spinning light globe thingy, but me and Matt started listening to the Replacements and singing our lungs out. That was a blast. More and more people showed up and by the time I had a few drinks, the party was in full swing. I probably should have drank a little less, but it was a really great time.

I woke up on Saturday around noon with no one else in the room. They were all next door playing Nintendo games. We ate some breakfast made lovingly by another Matt (lots of Matts in this post!) and then I met up with my brother, Adam, and his girlfriend, Gina, to go visit my Great Aunt Martha and Uncle Phil. They are getting on in years but are both so friendly, caring, and very funny. They have so many great stories. Both me and Adam were not allowed to leave without taking bagfulls of Oreos. The reason they were in bags was because I refused to take the whole package. We stopped at the women's volleyball match to visit my second cousins, Darcy and Scott. Scott was announcing the game and Darcy was running the sound, so they couldn't visit long.

My brother dropped me off back at the apartments just as a game of Monopoly was starting up. What luck that I got there in time to play! First, because I love Monopoly and second, because it would have been a boring three and a half hours if I had to just watch. Grant and Sarah had headed home, so Me, Chris, one of the Miami Matts, Matt, Jacob, and Katie played. There was some serious wheeling and dealing and I was getting by pretty well just owning the railroads and getting good rolls, but Chris came out victorious. I don't play to win, though, I just play to pretend to be a shrewd business man (I'm not).

That night, some more improv was performed. More Tower Players (there's so many of them) and a team from Dayton University. It was another good night of shows. After the show, we said our goodbyes and were on the road by about 11:30. After getting a little lost and passing the same ridiculous frat house decorated for a cowboy/cowgirl party three times, we got some bad directions and ended up in Virginia. Fortunately. we managed to get back on track and after about three hours of telling stories and waxing philosophic with Matt, we made it back home. We were thinking of staying the night in Oxford, but I'm glad I got to sleep in my own bed.

The weekend really couldn't have gone better and I'd like to thank the Tower Players we met and befriended although they will probably never read this. So, Matt, Matt, Ben, Angie, Jacob, John, Katie, Jamie, Chris, Chris, and a whole bunch of others, thank you very much for making us feel like part of the gang.

If I Had My Way, I'd See You Everyday

This is just gonna be a short post to mention this weekend. I am a member of the Bowling Green long form improv team, Bad Genetics, and this weekend we are going to perform at Miami University of Ohio in beautiful Oxford, OH. I am excited to be able to go out and do our thing for new audiences and I'm especially excited to go to Oxford because I have so much family there. At the same time, I only have so many more weekends with left with my friends here. It sucks to have to lose an entire weekend, but that's just how it goes. I'm a little bummed to be going, but I'd be pretty bummed if I wasn't going too. I'm kinda stuck. We'll just have to spend all our weeknights together this week!

Here's Something Fun!

So, I started making a list of the bands I've been listening to lately and I realized a current trend in my current music choices: most of them are ideal to drink to. Therefore, instead of just listing a few bands, I put together my perfect drinking playlist which I will present here. This list is like my dream jukebox and it would only truly work if I was with a bunch of other people who knew all the words to the songs. So, without further ado, my ideal drinking playlist:

1. Fight To Live by The Bouncing Souls - I start it off with an upbeat punk song about having a good time. It's the perfect start!
2. Vampires & Failures by Grandpaboy - Grandpaboy is Paul Westerberg's solo country/blues project. This song is more rocking than most Grandpaboy selections, but it's also laid back. This playlist kind of goes back and forth between upbeat and laid back.
3. You May Be Right by Billy Joel - Just a good upbeat song about good times. Also, it has an awesome drum beat when the chorus kicks in. I should probably have Only The Good Die Young but for some reason it's not on my computer.
4. Before I Break by Uncle Tupelo - The first of a number of alt-ountry songs on this playlist. Good Southern alt-country songs are perfect to drink along to. Especially since most of them mention drinking specifically.
5. Quality of Armor by Guided By Voices - No drinking playlist would be complete without a GBV song, it's perfect bar rock/pop. I picked this song because I just really like it.
6. Me and Joe Drove Out to California by Drag The River - More alt-country about having a good time. It's perfect.
7. Sleeping Aides and Razorblades by The Exploding Hearts - This is just a really good pop-rock song to get the bar dancing.
8. Massive Nights by The Hold Steady - The Hold Steady are the epitome of drinking music and are probably what inspired me to make this playlist. This song is just fantastic.
9. Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen - This should be self-explanatory.
10. Doublewhiskeycokenoice - Just a straight up punk song about drinking. Craig Finn of The Hold Steady put this on a list of his favorite drinking songs and I agree with him.
11. I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight by Lucero - Lucero is like a combination of the Replacements and Bruce Springsteen with a Memphis heart. I just found them and they are really fantastic.
12. We Didn't Come Here To Die by The Copyrights - A third punk song. It's kind of jarring after the southern vibe of Lucero, but there's nothing like singing along to this song.
13. Find Me Now by The Reigning Sound - This is a nice slow song as this playlist is only 15 songs long and is starting to wind down. I bought an album by The Reigning Sound at the beginning of this semester and it just recently clicked with me how awesome this band is (really awesome!).
14. Bastards of Young by The Replacements - The perfect drinking anthem, it will get a crowd of drunk Replacements fans screaming their lungs out.
15. I Miss That Band by Paul Baribeau - Wind it out with the most upbeat Paul Baribeau song. It's still very depressing, all his songs are. A solid way way to end the playlist, even though Paul has some depressing things to say about drinking in other songs.

Here's the cool treat in this post: I have posted this playlist through You Send It as an album called "Corey's Drinking Playlist." It's a zip file, so just unzip it somewhere on your hard drive and drag it into your music player, it will come up as the album "Corey's Drinking Playlist" (obviously). I have tested it in iTunes and it works, I think it will also work in other players. Some of the files come up as wierd letter combinations but they're tagged properly so they will look fine once they're in iTunes or whatever.

Here's the link: Corey's Drinking Playlist
To download it, you will have to register on the site. I know it sucks, but it's quick and I can't do anything about it. You may be able to use my name and password, although I'm not sure if it'll work. name: corey.close@gmail.com, password: lodhbk. Also, it will only be up for 7 days so act fast!

We All Kinda Fumbled Through The Jitterbug

So, a solid weekend, I must say. All in all, I wish they could all be like that, but I would run out of money very quickly.

The weekend started on Thursday this week, as Dave came up and I was determined to show him a good time. He insisted that it would be a good time no matter what, as long as beer was involved. I'm sure he would have been right, but the night ended up pretty massive. We went to Brathaus just the two of us. Emily came out first, after me and Dave had about 2 in us a piece. Then once we were hitting 6 or 7 Marie, Matt, and Kyle showed up. We had one or two more and headed over to Nate and Wally's. We got a pitcher, finished about half of it and headed back to the apartment. Dave bought some Hawaiian pizza. It was gross so I only had two pieces and passed out.

The next morning was kinda rough, but after a few more hours of sleep along with water and aspirin I was good enough for a delicious lunch at Wafflehouse. Tasty for sure. I kind of vegged out for the rest of the day. That night, I went out to Steve's for a little get together. It was a relatively sober night but we had a rad time, dancing and talking with friends. I tire of the bars pretty quickly, but I'll never get tired of these kinds of parties.

Saturday was St. Patrick's day, so while I'm not really concerned with the 1/8th of me that's Irish (it gets kept down by the 6/8th of me that's English) I took the opportunity to drink all day. I was drinking the Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout I mentioned in an earlier post along with Bell's Amber Ale and a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale. The Black Chocolate Stout was fantastic and very high in alcohol content, definitely a steal at 7 dollars for a 6 pack. The barleywine was terrific as usual but I got pretty tired of the amber ale. Throughout the day, I was drunk three separate times and got two free meals (thanks to Meg for the meal plan money and Sarah for the free Chipolte). It was a good day that culminated with me and Grant sitting on the fire escape of Dustin's apartment that overlooks downtown. We just yelled at people as they passed, reveling in the impunity the fire escape allowed.

Nothing happened Sunday.

Today, I went to some class but spent a good portion of the day cleaning. We let our place get out of control and it just needed to end. I also cooked some crab cakes and rice (I'm so domestic) for me and my friend Sarah. Four of the six crab cakes turned out really well. It's a dish I can kick ass at making, I just need to work on my patience to avoid burning them. We drank the Quarryman beer I mentioned in earlier post because she came back from Texas talking about Shiner Bock so I wanted to introduce her to a real Ohio beer. I loved the whole meal and she said she enjoyed it as well. We ate ice cream and watched Jesus Camp. That movie is astonishing in the truths it presents in an objective way. All in all, it was a very nice night, a quiet way to cap out a great weekend.

In other news, I'm reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. It's a real fantastic book, a better job than any biography or even autobiography could do at getting into Steinbeck's head. He's definately my favorite author, although I still haven't read many of his denser works (East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, etc.). I plan to get to them, but right now it's more fun to read stories about drinking and fighting.

She's Got Nothing But All To Lose, Which Is Nothing At All To Lose.

This weekend, I am going on a bender. It started last night. I'll post about it on Sunday or Monday. It's pretty rad so far.

I've Seen So Much Innovation That It Puts Me To Sleep

So it was a break, nothing memorable, nothing going down in the history books. I'm glad I spent most of it at home. Here's the way things went.

Saturday #1- Went home with Joey and Steve. The cat's greeted me warmly, which is always nice. My mom made a Thanksgiving-esque dinner which is one of my favorite types of meals. I sat around the house for a bit, then went to Dave's. Dave, Kevin and I watched Beerfest. That movie was much, much funnier than I expected it to be. I think I'll rent it for Mike to see.

Sunday #1- Went to church, which is always nice. Didn't do much else.

Monday- I forget what I did Monday. Not much?

Tuesday- Also kind of up in the air. I helped my dad with some painting stuff, but he insisted it was mostly a "one man job" that day. I went to Half-Price Books, but there wasn't much I was interested in.

Wednesday- Put down painters tape for my dad then just hung out until 9. Dave, Sean and I went to the 1899 Pub and had a lot to drink and sat around bullshitting. It was very nice. Sean's brother Robby picked us up and we went to IHOP. I got an ice cream sundae and for some reason drank about 2 pots of coffee. It did not keep me awake when I got home, I passed out pretty much instantly.

Thursday- Mom and Dad were both home. We got the painting finished! Me and my mom went shopping for some threads after that. I got a few sweaters. They are nice. We also stopped at Half-Price Books where I got a copy of Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. I am excited to read it. Went back to 1899, this time with Mike, Dave, Sean and Sean's girlfriend Megan. We talked about Lake Catholic High School teachers a lot. We had a lot of very ridiculous teachers. I only had 2 drinks, though, because I had to drive home.

Friday- We moved furniture back in place becaus the painting was done. It was less of a hassle than I expected it to be. I went to the St. Gabriel's fish fry and ate a lot of fish, it was very tasty. I found out that the volunteers who fry the fish get to drink beer all night while they fry. It made me want to volunteer as a fryer (frier?). After the fish fry, Kevin, Bryan, Jessie, and I went to the Grog Shop to see Vic Ruggierro. He was playing with Westbound Train, so all the openers were ska bands. Free Sample Tuesday were ok but boring, 80HD knocked it out of the park as usual and the Skatastrophes were god awful. Vic Ruggierro is the lead singer of the Slackers, but he also plays solo country/blues stuff. He's very goofy and eccentric and has a very thick Brooklyn accent. I was entertained. After that, we went to Guy's Pizza where slices are only a buck. I got 2 slices of pepperoni. They were very tasty, definitely worth a buck.

Saturday #2- I went to Lina's and picked up some beer: Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout and Saison Etrange from the now defunct Querryman Tavern and Brewery in Berea, Ohio. I'm especially excited to try the saison because I believe it has had time to age and it's a local brewery so I'll be able to keep Cleveland in my heart while I drink it. I also went to church on Saturday so I wouldn't have to wake up on Sunday. After church, I went over to Dave's to watch the Cav's game. It was a nail biter but we eked it out by 2 points. Plus, Ira Newble played and seeing him play is a rare occurrence. After the game, we went to my house with Kevin and listened to music and drank beer until about 3:30. It was a very nice night. Kevin and Dave are probably getting an apartment in Cleveland next school year. I am excited to go visit them there.

Sunday #2- I woke up and arranged a ride back with Joey. I packed my things, went to Taco Bell, and then waited for Joey to pick me up. We had a nice ride back as we talked about our breaks among other things.

That was my break. Nothing else really happened except I read the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It was a very enjoyable read. I suggest it and Michael Lewis' latest, The Blind-Side, to anybody looking for a sports book with more broad appeal, because they both have that in spades.

This Goes Out to Anyone Who Knows Where My Head Has Been These Last Few Days

Earlier this semester, I really wasn't looking forward to spring break. I mean, I didn't mind, but I planned on spending a good portion of it at the apartment. For some reason, the past 2 weeks or so, I have become very excited to spend some time at home. I guess I've just been thinking about the things I want to do when I'm home. Here are the things I'm most looking forward to, in no particular order.

Going to Lina's
Lina's Wine and Beverage is probably one of the most bizarre places in the entire world. Judged just by appearances, it looks like every other seedy liquor store in the world, and on one hand it is. They have every thing a seedy liquor store should have: Porno mags, cheap liquor and beer, etc. On the other hand, they have the largest selection of microbrew and import beers in northeast Ohio. Drinking microbrewed beers has become a serious hobby of mine and I get so frustrated by the large holes in the selection here in northwest Ohio: holes my side of Ohio would most definitely have if it weren't for the existence of Lina's. I will be making at least one stop here while I'm home, specifically to pick up the insanely delicious Gumballhead wheat beer. It's like candy and I can't find it around here.

Hanging with my Cat's
My family has 2 cats: KC and Pippen. They are both rad. KC is getting so old and so affectionate, she's just a joy to have around. Pippen is much younger and has so much energy and if you pet her on the side of her face and move your hand away, she'll follow it until she nearly falls over. It's adorable! They will be getting some serious face time with me.

Going to 1899
I was talking to a friend the other day about the college bars. I've never been, but it's not because I don't like bars. I'm just afraid of the crowds I'm sure fill the college places. I have a favorite bar at home, and I love going there. It's called 1899, and it's a very rad place. Once again, their beer selection is very solid, so I get my fix on nice beer and at $2.75 a bottle, the price isn't obscene. They also have a very nice upstairs section with couches and encyclopedias if you need them (really!). I hope I get a chance to head over there.

Listening to Coast to Coast AM
One of the best pleasures of going out at night while I'm at home are the car rides back to my house after spending the night doing whatever. I just turn on WTAM 1100 and listen to Coast to Coast AM, which is a conspiracy theory radio show syndicated around the country. It may be on the radio around here but I've never looked for it. At home though, listening to crazy people talk about aliens and reptoids and all other sorts of nutty stuff is the best way to unwind after a night out. Also, while we're talking about radio...

Listening to Opie and Anthony
Opie and Anthony are unlike any "shock jocks" I've ever heard, mostly because they are ridiculously funny, but also because they don't take themselves at all seriously and don't worry about trying to find and work on the typical "hot button" issues that shock jocks always try to drive into the ground. It's the most genuinely entertaining radio show I have every heard and they make Howard Stern seem like uninspired garbage.

Going to Half Price Books
Grounds For Thought is a coffee shop/used book store around here but the selection is embarrassing. Last time I was there I couldn't even find a single book by John Steinbeck. Half Price Books is always busting at the seams with super cheap literature. I hope to pick up a copy of Tortilla Flats as well as some more books by Graham Greene while I am home. HPB also tends to carry a selection of interesting classic computer games, which are another passion of mine. They also have a rack of old games for like 2 dollars and I have made some awesome finds there (Syberia for 2 dollars and LucasArts' Afterlife most notably off the top of my head). I'm looking to find a new copy of Grim Fandango and possibly another LucasArts adventure game or two. I feel like a wiener going into such a nice bookstore and looking at the video games, but I am a collector and the chance to find a hidden treasure is irresistible.

There are more things I'm looking forward to like visiting friends, but these are the simple pleasures that make going home worth it.

In other news, I finished A Burnt-Out Case. The ending seemed hastily put together but I really dug it all the way through. It is a highly suggested read.