I probably shoulda posted about this earlier, but my friends Pontiak are on tour. They're somewhere out west right now, doing some vaudevillian riffing. They got an album just came out called Valley of Cats. It's got some Tom Waits moments, if the dude played guitars instead of human skulls and ukealaelis or whatever he's doing now.

I saw the Lil' Wayne video for shooter, which I guess has been out for a while. I guess in the video they decided to do some combination of the Nelly and Tim McGraw split screen where the two musicians never meet and the Run DMC/ Aerosmith playing the music through each other's walls and competing to see who's loudest thing from Walk This Way. The whole song is full of sound effects from a robbery in progress and police chase - I think that would've been a pretty good video.

I went to the Ravens game on Sunday and watched them humiliate Oakland. During halftime the marching band played a meddley of Iron Man and Mama I'm Coming Home. It was dope.

So I read Entertainment Weekly today, and found out that the Wire has been confirmed to go all the way through season 5 and that the new Jay-Z is officially coming out. Not bad

I went to Hampdenfest yesterday, which is a street festival they have every year here in Baltimore. It's fun, they have bands and little stalls selling stuff nobody would want and it was a nice day. I saw Long Live Death for the second time there. I had seen them before but I thought it was boring. They're this band with about 10 people on stage and most of them are playing drums. I had seen them open for someone in the Ottobar, and when you're standing up in a crowded bar nobody wants to hear that type of shit - at least not me. At this festival though, where everybody was just milling around and casually watching and kids were popping ollies in front of the stage it was perfect.

I went to a death metal show last night. Versus the Mirror, Misery Index, From a Second Story Window, A Life Once Lost, and Darkest Hour. It's crazy man, this type of stuff is intense. It reminded me a bit of punk shows when I was younger but there was a lot more macho shit going on in the crowd and the music was more epic. I don't know what they were singing about, but I was thinking maybe Versus the Mirror was upset like I was when Giant stopped making Barbeque Corn Chips and they're singing about still missing them years later. There were a whole bunch of stage divers, especially during Darkest Hour - so much that people standing in the first couple rows were probably so wrapped up in watching out for someone jumping on them and shit that they must've been kinda distracted from the band. I saw one guy do a cannonball from the stage. There was lots of arm windmilling in the pit too, so you had to watch your ass if you were close to it. I was hanging back from all that, standing a few row back from the stage and kinda to the side, and some fool jumped on my head. I didn't see him till he was right on me, but dude must've took a running jump for me from the stage. I didn't have time to get my hands up and with me standing a head above the rest of the audience, the guy landed all his weight basically on my forehead and damn near broke my neck. I was having fun up until then, and it is nice to see a live crowd, but I kinda got the impression that for some people metal is an excuse to just get together and beat the shit out of each other while some dude plays guitar.

What's up?

I went with my brother, his fiancee, and their friend to this cabin my parents had built up in the mountains. It's dope. I learned how to play spades and we made a fire pitt and a fire.

Preview for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. I'm excited about it, but apparently this is gonna really emphasize them being ninjas. I like them just keeping it simple and beating people up, not messing around with grappling hooks and James Bond gadgets. We'll have to see. The Ninja Turtles introduced a young boy to pizza, and I never looked back since. Best cartoon ever.