i was saying boo-urns.

oh wait, no- i was booing too.

"president" bush threw out the first pitch on opening day at the nationals/braves game sunday night and was serenaded with a spectacular hail of boo's from the moment he stepped out of the dugout to the moment he left the field. when the catcher handed him back the ball he also gave him a couple of sympathetic pats on the back. bush looked at him with the, "they hate me but what are ya gonna do?" shrug and speed-walked into the tunnel. good jorb washington baseball fans! ye gads, i fucking hate that guy.



it was fucking awesome. and definitely worth sitting through the "most exciting player in baseball" talk that preceded the first pitch. thanks, espn. it has begun.

in the 5th inning elijah dukes was "suddenly" taken out of the game, because on the way back to the dugout he impregnated and threw a gatorade bottle at a 17 year old... again. why is this man still allowed to play baseball? actually, why isn't this man in jail?

and after the braves tied it up, my 3b ryan zimmerman came up and smacked a walk-off home run, mouthing, "get the fuck outta here" as the liner went over the fence. ZIM, DOOM DOOM DOOM!

the real opening day starts tomorrow at 1pm.

GAMERA IS MIGHTY!

the standings after 2 games in tokyo...

GAMERA IS MIGHTY!

the street value of johan santana.

most of you know who johan santana is, for those of you who don't- he's the best pitcher in baseball. a top draft pick in any fantasy league let alone real-actual baseball.

hern (mgr The Upside Downers) had him last year and kept him. so i (mgr GAMERA) tried to make him a deal:

johan santana for casey kotchman and 5 lbs of freshly sliced bacon.

he declined: santana is not even hurt, for christs sake!
----

i tried to sweeten the deal with a 2nd trade offer:

okay hern (mgr The Upside Downers),

you wanna play hardball, that's fine.

i'll tell you what.

johan santana for casey kotchman and johan santana's weight in freshly sliced bacon. so it'd be just like you were keeping johan santana, but in bacon- bacon johan santana. and bacon makes everything better, hern. if you don't believe that, you support the terrorists. why do you hate our troops, hern?

sincerely,
lynn (mgr GAMERA)
---

that's a great fucking deal- never mind the talented casey kotchman, according to baseballreference.com johan's like 6' and 195 lbs. that's nearly 200 pounds of bacon! and i'll bet if you could create the proper armature and get a fryer large enough, you could actually cook it into the form of johan santana. a BACON JOHAN SANTANA. do you know how much that would be worth??

still awaiting reply. i have a good feeling about this...

UPDATE: trade REJECTED. shocking! "you and your filthy trade offers." i think that means it almost worked!!! damn. so close to the bacon johan santana i'll bet he could smell it.

UPDATE #2: GAMERA IS MIGHTY!

xmlb '08 draft... gentlemen, to evil!

every year a group of valiant and spritely individuals get together in mid-town to perform the task they were destined to do: win the much sought after XMLB league trophy for excellence in fantasy baseball. saturday, 3/22/08 was one such gathering.

we converged upon the draft headquarters, otherwise known as dan's office conference room with the creepy stuffed raccoon in it at noonish. the two newbies had arrived earlier to participate in the supplemental draft, as everyone who was in the league last year got to keep 5 players. once the supplemental was over, the draft order was determined by pulling balls out of a bingo cage (ball pulled can choose spot in order- ha ha ball pulled). balls. each manager was given the same amount of balls as their placement at the end of last season. so, since craig is an asshole and finished 1st, he only got 1 ball. that's 1 ball. since i came in 4th, even though i was a rookie and the only girl in the league- i got 4 balls. that's 4 balls. and so on and so forth, etc.

after much ado and whiskey for some, we were ready to draft. the order was as follows:


here's a behind the scenes look at one of our breaks. it's nerdery at it's best and a good time taboot.

if you found that amusing, you're a nerd.

when all was said and done, craig is still an asshole. he's the biggest asshole in the league, actually.

and mighty team GAMERA starts off the 2008 season as:
1) david ortiz*
2) ichiro*
3) derek jeter*
4) eric byrnes*
5) robinson cano*
6) ryan zimmerman
7) jacoby ellsbury (kid's amazing- he's fucking worth it, so suck my 4 balls)
8) rich hill
9) javier vazquez (had him last year, solid starter)
10) chad billingsley
11) matt capps
12) joakim soria
13) clay buchholz (limited innings, but should do me good)
14) ivan rodriguez (he can stay strong another year)
15) kosuke fukudome (let's see what the hype is aboot)
16) hideki okajima (killer middle reliever)
17) kevin kouzmanoff
18) pat neshek
19) casey kotchman
20) melky cabrera
21) greg maddux
22) chris perez**

* my keepers from last year
** i'm ahead of the buzz, he's not even available yet, so i'm currently left with 1 extra roster spot

to keep up with the latest xmlb news, stay tuned to xmlb.org

gentlemen, to evil!

moe., 3/7/08, palace theater, albany, ny

oooh, was i excited when this show was announced!!! lowell hadn't seen moe. since high school (wetlands era), so he took my extra. that's back in the day when they still played "ugly american". when we got there he looked up and said, "they added a 5th guy?" (it's been a while is my point). annnd marty told me to remind him 2 weeks before the show- which i did and that worked out well, cuz then marty and lowell and i went to see moe. friday 3/7 at the palace theater in albany, ny. the last time i was at the palace was for the rock the vote / "looking for answers?" <-- yes, a question mark! (<-- exclamation point) tour that featured: ominous seapods, moe., yolk, and moon boot lover (oh man, if that tour had a reunion... i'd rock all 4 nights.). that's right: classic north country rock ala 1996. ahh, the wonderful clinton years... siiigh... i just died a little bit inside.

anyways, it was absolutely shit-storming the whole day and the drive up to albany took extra time due to the fucking monsoon hitting the entire hudson valley. i don't typically have bad road experiences (knocking on wood) but i completely lost sight of the road twice and thought i might die. WIND + RAIN + tractor trailers doing 60 in the right lane = awesome. i got to schenectady and marty and i chilled for a couple of minutes before heading back to albany, swinging by lowell's, and going downtown to find parking. good fun. we ended up missing the first 10 minutes of the show, no big deal. i was psyched to be there. lowell's face lit up like a med student eyeing a fresh corpse*. marty was blown away by the sound, perfectly mixed for the room. it really did sound amazing! the crowd was chill and chock full of overwhelmingly warm north country vibes. al gave a speech about how amazing it is to play in albany and how special the night was, it was adorable. :) i totally felt the love. it was a thrill to see them rocking the hell out of a sold out show at the palace.

okay, enough of that hippie sap. i'm still getting used to a lot of the new songs, a couple are starting to grow on me. it was weird to get an album of brand new moe. songs. did anyone else find that amusingly jarring? what impresses me the most is that sticks and stones is only 41 minutes long! the SINGLE for meat was 45 minutes! my mind has been blown! cathedral was nice and pretty and to replace my praise for each song and how great they sounded let's say it was a SOLIDLY ROCKIN' first set! the new backdrops are gorgeous and the lightshow is the perfect compliment to all of it. EFFFIN AWESOME, man. it was like, i was in HACKNEY. you know, in my MIND. everyone was on fire!!! vinnie was a force to be reckoned with, jim was ballistic, chuck was WAILING- jesus christ, CHUCK IS ON FIRE and there is NO STOPPING IT!!!! i fucking swear, he gets better every time i see him!!! it's evil!!! CHUCK IS SATAN.

during set break marty called happy lopez and to our surprise he was standing like 4 rows in front of us in the aisle... HA! shortly thereafter pat came by to say hello- and each of them yelled at us to go to valentine's afterwards to see raisinhead and lynch... i don't know what marty was thinking, but i was like... wow. do we kick this old skool or what? 4am closing time? lowell was on-call in the morning so he had no choice... but what would we do?

set II started off with a bang- crab eyes (AWESOME) building slowly into a screaming spaz rx! but HOLY SHIT. one of my favorite new songs- QUEEN OF EVERYTHING. what an AWESOME classic rock song. rob fucking BELTED this song out, it was a sick sick sick version- WOW, i am so excited to see what happens with this song in the future! it's the new "whipping post" or "why does love got to be so sad?" you don't think i mean that, but i do.

queen went into bullet to finish it back from set I. then they sank into rebubula and i was in heaven just soaking it in. marty rolled his eyes and told me that i was "being all dreamy on rob". well, so what if i was? he's dreamy.

then i was slightly traumatized when rebubula -> plane crash. in the words of nancy kerrigan-- "WHYYYYYY???? NOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHYYYYYYY???" so, i went to pee.

it took them a while to come back out for the encore but the reason was probably cuz they are bringing up handfuls of fans to sing backup on 'raise a glass' for part of this tour which i would venture to guess was al's idea (skippy looked like he was having a heart attack- i can't believe he has to do that every night) but i could be wrong- anyone know? some guy in an orange t shirt was going nuts up there and we couldn't stop laughing. the song is great, i love a good irish ditty to wrap up the night. they did september which is kind of ballad-y and i was really hoping they didn't end with it because it really brought the energy level down, i might wanna hear that in the middle of a set instead. i turned to marty and said, "this better go back into rebubula..." he laughed. and then after a little while... i heard the first tease and YAAAY, they were going back into rebubula! happy girl! that's all it takes! and with a balls out rockin' jam and the entire room singing along they wrapped up an amazing show.

um. well, marty and i dropped off lowell and we ALLLLMOST went to valentine's but we totally pussied out. we went to get pizza instead. happy called us and we couldn't understand a word he was saying, but it was probably just him calling us from valentine's to call us pussies.

9 HUZZAHS! the band is so tight and it's truly an amazing feeling to watch them get better with age. the 5 of them pull shit out from who knows WHERE and it continually rocks my socks off. the music always has a point- it's an adventure at every turn. together with the lights and the sound mix (the moe.down crew replacement-jam was one of the best replacement-jams EVER, btw), it's a dream team. i fucking love moe.!

setlist:

SET I
Not Coming Down- >
Wormwood ->
Cathedral
Bullet ->
Okayalright
Down Boy ->
George

SET II
Crab Eyes ->
Spaz Rx
Wind it Up
Queen Of Everything ->
Bullet
Rebubula ->
Plane Crash ->
Drums ->
Plane Crash

E:
Raise A Glass
September ->
Rebubula

download or stream the show from archive!!! if you're not going to listen to the whole thing, i recommend streaming "queen of everything", it's fucking ROCKING.
http://www.archive.org/details/moe.2008-03-07.flac16_mk4

*and then he went on and on about how amazing jim is and what kind of element he adds. JIMMMAAAY!

slideshow- fancy!

one night in HACKNEY...

this past year upon arriving and claiming ground at moe.down, around 11am or so, we settled into our usual spot and started setting up. i'm pretty sure we had just about finished all the tents and were possibly done with the canopies as well and had just sat down to enjoy the fruits of our labor, when a blaring, thumping, techno beat started interrupting the flow.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR VIRTUAL CYBER BLOGGY EXPERIENCE:
to get the full effect, i recommend the following steps using the videos below.
1) press play on "ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY"
2) wait maybe 15 seconds, and THEN...
3) press play on the footage of the CAMPSITE FLAGS and watch that
(enjoying it?)
4) continue reading below:

ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY:


this footage is from a few hours later, but you'll get the idea...
CAMPSITE FLAGS:


you are now enjoying... ONE NIGHT... IN HACKNEY. at moe.down.

you see what i'm getting at. and the embedded video isn't actually the full version of the song, but that youtube page didn't have an embed code, so here's the link to the 7 minute version of "ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY" but i do recommend you also watch the above video, to find out what it's really like to spend "ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY", i think the guys did a good job capturing the experience.

from STAY UP FOREVER RECORDS, here's DYNAMO CITY's "ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-LX7bqTkZM&feature=related

anywhoosits, eventually we all started voicing our opinions (as did our neighbors) loudly enough (in between songs) that the RAVE TENT GUYS moved the RAVE TENT somewhere else.

but for hours or days or until we forgot, everyone was adding "IN HACKNEY" in a deep bri'ish voice to the ends of sentences or words. it was a good time. and i had completely forgotten about it 'til hern emailed me this article the other day:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/travel/09surfacing.html?8dpc

and for like a minute or two i was like, why the fuck did he send me this? maybe he sent it to the wrong person... but then (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) i remembered that (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) TAKE THIS PILL (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) so i did* (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) what was that? (thump) (thump) (thump) (thump) ONE NIGHT IN HACKNEY!!!!

"we raged HACKNEY at moe.down" -el herno

*i did not take that pill

BLAUNCH!!!

that's a blog-launch. i just made that up. i own it. it's MINE.

http://lynnguppy.blogspot.com

let the ruckus begin!!!

bourbon's bday bash, currently nameless reunion, 3/1/08, middle earth, bradford, vt

last year the bourbon cowboy sent out a save the date for his 50th birthday blowout bash. then last month he changed the date to 3/1. :) one of his goals was to get a band we all used to go see in burlington, currently nameless, back together for a reunion. the band had played their last show in 2002 and bourbon wanted a special birthday present this year. so, currently nameless got back together, rehearsed, and played their first live show in 6 years at the bourbon cowboy's birthday bash.

oh yeah, and from friday night to saturday morning the northeast was subject to a winter "storm". and mr. kevin cahill's surprise party was on friday night-> i couldn't leave til saturday. so, saturday morning i went onto noaa.gov and tracked the forecast hour-by-hour between here at bradford and tried to figure out the perfect time to leave: it was supposed to stop snowing there around 6pm and the show started at 8pm. okay, so i was pretty much fucked... but most of the drive was awesome and quick, it got dark towards the end of massachusetts, and after brattleboro it started snowing again in squalls and the wind was blowing the snowbanks over the road which is always fun in the dark. oh, did i mention the frost heaves? i've never seen/felt them so bad. for you flatlanders, here is a description of a frost heave: http://www.vermontfrostheaves.com/article/view/9039/1/1291/ - i'm talking about the pavement ones which are not to be confused with the basketball team- who also claim to be a "bump in (the) road". anyways, they were rough on 91.

i pulled up to middle earth and had to change into my hiking boots before heading into the show (late) and catching the last 1 1/2 songs of the social club orchestra's set (bourbon was rockin' it out in one of his 14 bands). i saw eric d., reg, kathi, and josh keller! with long, flowing, beautiful rock n' roll locks! drew price, sara, bill, amy ligay, leeeza, cajun jim, mojo mark, bourbon cowboy! crazy. it was really awesome to see everyone again. i feel like between the nameless and the seapods shows i got to see soooo many people i haven't seen in years. totally awesome! oh and the birthday cake said, "happy birthday dave". who the fuck is dave? dave's not here, man.

annnnd nameless hit the stage 15 minutes early. they played 3 sets. i didn't keep a setlist and i haven't found any online yet... they played some old, some new (seriously) songs, some songs they forgot the words to, and actually... they ran out of songs that they still knew and could play, or else they might have played longer perhaps. someday i, stain resistant man, starbelly groove, st. alia, onion, ocheh, pickel barrel (kind of), you know and love all of these!
listen to some nameless: http://cdbaby.com/cd/nameless

they sounded amazing- really, music to my ears. i had forgotten how awesome they are. white soul with a 5 part harmony. funkalicious blues rock. spectacular! hard to believe they haven't played together in 6 years (okay, they practiced a little).

the band decided it would be silly to rehearse so much and only play one gig, so they'll be doing a handful of shows at some point soon, stay tuned to their myspace page for the info: http://www.myspace.com/therealcurrentlynameless

i was bourbon's designated driver for the evening, so you can imagine how fun that car ride was in the dark with icy/snowy roads and bourbon cowboy on the passenger side screaming, "HOLY FUCK IS THAT A DEER????" every 5 seconds.

the next day i headed up to stowe with sara... it was slightly windy and very cold and by the time we got up there in the afternoon there was a lot of ice forming taboot. oh yeah, northeast skiing, i had forgotten... :-P the snow supposedly has been great this year up in vt though, so i might have to go back after their next storm. i got to meet sara's kid, who has a fondness for beer and JAZZ HANDS! then saw my brother and sis-in-law who brought some juniors over to matt and amy's where i was staying, which is a frickin' awesome house in the middle of the woods (and cat-free). so cool. oh, their kid noah also seems to enjoy JAZZ HANDS!

hit burlington in the morning for breakfast with my sister in law and ate at magnolia bistro, vermont's first green certified restaurant. the menu was pretty awesome. i had the banana bread french toast. the bread itself was slightly drier than i would have hoped for, but still good. the coffee was awesome- vermont coffee co.'s mexican blend (i went to city market and bought some before taking off- holy fuck is this stuff good). and i drank way too much of it. colleen had 1 lemon and ricotta pancake and 1 coconut oatmeal pancake. the lemon one was interesting, very light, the lemon taste was almost so pure it had hints of garlic- i thought it'd be a little sweeter, it had a crepe-like texture. so weird. the oatmeal coconut pancake was definitely good. i might try the lime waffle in the future or maybe go crazy and not have a breakfast food at all (wild!).

oh, and i also hit the bern gallery. HA!

here are some pics of the weekend:

bourbon's bday weekend adventure