A Favor, If I May

Good day to all!

I have a request for those of you who live in Colorado, and it's as much for your benefit as for mine. Anybody can participate, but especially those of you in Colorado. I have a friend who lives in Nashville who writes the most amazing music I've ever heard. His name is Gavin Mikhail, and I would absolutely, more than anything ever, love to see him in concert anywhere in Colorado.

So... here's where you come in. Head on over to his MySpace page and listen to some of his really, really awesome songs. They're cool, and it's free, so you've got no reason not to. Then, once you've appreciated the music, add him as a friend then come back here and click the cool button on the left.

Not only will you have discovered some really awesome new music, you'll have done something so we can all go see a kick ass concert! It's win-win. Now go, do it, do it now! :)

A Few Quick Notes

If I had to pick a candidate to vote for, it would probably be Obama, and it is because of his speech last night. He slammed the Bush administration and the current state of the Republican party. He made many promises, and most importantly, he talked about America's dire need for change.

But... is it any more than just talk? Speeches like this would mean more if the candidate didn't have prepared remarks, if they instead had to speak from the heart. Sure, Obama's speech was well-written, but what are the chances that he wrote it? He delivered it, and passionately, but it was, in all likelihood, written by a professional speech-writer who was tasked with coming up with the things people want to hear.

And yes, I want to hear about change. But what I don't want is to hear about it because somebody is analyzing the results of a focus group and writing a speech that caters to getting the biggest popularity boost. I don't want to hear about it because Obama was told to say it. I want to hear these things because he intends to take these ideas and run with them, because he actually intends to change things instead of listening only to the big corporations lining his pockets.

So, let me rephrase my first sentence. If I thought there was a chance in hell that either of the two candidates would change something, I'd think that Obama would be the one to change it for the better. But that leaves us with the question, do I think that either one will change anything.

Hell no.

And I thought all hope was lost....

Then they came back and sound f-ing fantastic. Who? you ask. Well, uh.. let's start out like this. When they started making music, they were grungy but talented. Then they cleaned up and their music style changed and they lost a lot of fans (but that was the era that I joined in). then they released S&M, which is, to this day, one of the best albums ever... then they released St. Anger, an album that's existence I will barely acknowledge.

Then this. Metallica's Death Magnetic. The name sucks, but the music.... um, yeah. Fantastic. Amazing. Back to the Metallica we all know and love. Guitar solos. Drums that don't sound like they're actually trash cans in disguise. Great lyrics. Did I mention guitar solos?

I hope they have something epically awesome like One or Fixxxer. I will die of sheer joy.

To this day, no album has seen more play time in a stereo/CD player/iPod/etc than ReLoad. I bought it in April of '97, and it was in my stereo constantly until whenever Disturbed came out with The Sickness. That's how much I love Metallica (and meanwhile, Disturbed has faded into mediocrity... sad panda).

For those rockers out there, especially those who lost faith after that disasterous angry album, check out the new singles, which are online at:

http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601119 (the better of the two I think) and http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601136 (not nearly as good)

Note: please don't sue me for posting that, I'm only giving you more business :)

Consider my night made!

Phelps Does It!

....... I'm going to try to overcome my speechlessness here and actually say something about Phelps and his record 8 gold medals. EIGHT?! Simply unbelieveable. I'm watching replays right now, and... what do you say to that? Words fail to describe it, perhaps the chills I get watching the medal ceremony as the national anthem blares over the speakers comes closer to hitting it. But I'm not sure.

Race number 7, the 100m butterfly, was jaw-dropping. 1/100th of a second. What? Can something actually be that close? I watched that replay over and over and over again. Did he actually touch first? It looked like, all the way up until the very end that Cavic was going to take that race, but then they annouced that Phelps had won... and I'll be honest here, I thought they were mistaken. But you watch the replay, and you realize that he did actually touch first, even if it was by one-one-hundredth of a second. Then of course Cavic's coach had to protest it, which left that little nagging discomfort during the whole course of the medal ceremony, but that was thankfully overturned. Like the announcers said, "magical".

I almost care that he only set an Olympic record instead of a world record on that.

Moving on to medal 8 of 8... I'm always nervous about relays, since it's not necessarily just about Phelps' talent, but also the talents of everybody else on the team. Thankfully though, Team USA came through in spades. Did you see Phelps pull away during the second 50m of his split? That man is simply amazing. Then, during the last split of the race, I was edge of my seat... but Lezak is awesome and we all know it.

Cool stat I pulled from the announce team here: There have been 112 modern day Olympic Games (summer and winter), over 100,000 atheletes have competed... and only one has won 8 medals in a single Olympics.

That certainly is one of the greatest - if not the greatest - moment in sports history. Hell, I'm excited, and I'm never really excited about the Olympics.

Hats off to Michael Phelps. What an amazing accomplishment. So that gives him a combined total of thirty-two world records, tied with Spitz, who was also the previous holder of 7 gold medals in a single Games. 8 gold medals... 7 world records... 1 Olympic record... the best moment in Olympic history.

I think this will be my last Olympic update. Aside from this, there's little I care about, and come on, there's very little that can compare to 8 gold medals. On that note, I'd like to leave with a thought I actually pulled from an advertisement for Visa that ran in Sports Illustrated. I think this is very, very powerful.

Maybe it's not where an athelete's from

that makes us root for them.

Maybe it's not the flag on their back,

or the anthem that we hear when they win

that makes us cheer.

Maybe it's simply that they are human.

And we are human.

And when they succeed, we succeed.

More Olympics

Michael Phelps is now up to SIX gold medals, plus SIX world records to go right along with them. Life is simply astounding for that man right now. How gratifying must it be to see all these years of work paying off so well? That must be an amazing feeling.

Check out the screenshot below... observe the ridiculous amount of space between Phelps and the rest of the pack. Also notice how the judges in the first few lanes are all looking at Phelps' finish instead of the folks in their respective lanes. :) Finally, wouldn't it suck to be the guy in lane 1? He's barely even on the screen.

Anyway, kudos to NBC for their fine coverage of the Olympics so far. It's nice having a large assortment of Olympic channels to browse, and the fact that I can watch most of the coverage online is fantastic too.

Olympics Post Day 5

What do you say to this?

• 5 Gold medals in Beijing (so far)
• 5 World records (so far... one for each medal)
• 11 career gold medals (...so far)

You say "Hot damn that's AWESOME!", that's what. Or, you just stare in slack-jawed, silent admiration. Picture this: you are so good at what you do that you break your own world record for the 7th (no, that's not a typo) time on your way to winning your 4th Beijing medal (10th career). That's what Michael Phelps did last night when he won the 200m butterfly event. Can you imagine that, beating your own world record seven times?!?!?! Then, about an hour later, Phelps and the US team absolutely conquered the 4x200m relay. And by conquered, I mean dominated, obliterated, and decimated the competition (and the world record too, for that matter). When the US swimmer is so far ahead of the pack that they have trouble keeping both first and second place in the same frame, you know you're witnessing an ass kicking. When even the green world record line almost falls off the screen... I have nothing more to say about that. I mean, it wasn't quite as dramatic as the come from (way) behind, last second, jaw dropping win the US pulled out in the 4x100m relay, but come on. There is something so cool about watching a world record being not just beaten, but destroyed.

NBCOlympics.com has a poll currently active asking if we think Phelps is the "greatest American athelete of all time". Our answer... overwhelmingly yes.

So then, what do you say to 8 Beijing medals? That's beyond words. And it's something that Phelps is likely to pull off. He's favored to win all three of his other events, and that, I think, will go down as probably the greatest American Olympic moment in history. Finally, to this question, I think the answer is pretty obvious.

Olympics After Day 4

At first, I didn't care. Now I do.

Can we all say WOW! for Michael Phelps?!?!?!??! As of this writing, he's sitting on 3 (THREE!) gold medals with an equal number of world records. The man is unreal!

Last night's big story was gymnastics. To start off with, WTH is up with the new scroing system? It's convoluted and seems even more prone to a judge's subjectivity than the previous version. And that, I think, was in full effect last night in the men's finals. This high bar routines that Team USA did were ridiculous on the difficulty scale and were all executed PERFECTLY, all 3 of them! Yet they couldn't score more than mid-range 15's.

The first two pommel horse routines were disastrous, but how about Alexander Sascha Atemev and his absolutely amazing performance there? I was standing up cheering, because that was just superb. Again with the tiny score (15.3? Really?), but that was one hell of a performance.

But if I really want to talk about blown away, I'd be loathe not to mention Jonathan Horton, who came out and did 4 performances and was simply perfect in all of them.

Congratulations to all of them on the bronze.

Revolution

All things considered, I won't vote for either of the two political candidates. They're both puppets and braindead. Not only that, they're out of touch with what this country needs.

That's why I was very excited to see this in my facebook inbox today:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

Ron Paul FTW! It's great to see that, even though he won't be president this time around, Ron Paul's Revolution will continue! Just for grins, check this out! It's ME!