May the ass be with you.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.24.2002

I had one hell of a day yesterday, lemme tell you. You see, the Red Sox had a game back in April that got postponed due to large droplets of water traveling southward from the skies, so they rescheduled it for yesterday. A day, of course, that was thick with disgusting humidity and temperatures somewhere in the low 90's. However, I trudged over like a good little Red Sox soldier-fan and met my friend Dan, and we settled in for what turned out to be quite an entertaining ride. The Red Sox won 22-4. There were seven home runs, many errors, and one-half of a water bottle poured down my neck and back to keep me cool. In the seventh inning, with the score being 18-4, we decided to see if we could give ourselves a little instant seat upgrade, and whoa, did we ever. How about front row, right behind home plate? Again, Dan's site clearly demonstrates just how excellent it was.

You think that's all? Oh, no, partner. That's not all. My close friend and former record label co-owners were in town and I haven't hung out with those dudes for like 2 or 3 years. Man, do I miss them. After the game I met them at my palace and we had some dinner and then went to see SLOAN! And holy hell, did Sloan deliver the rock goods. Leg kicks, arm pumping, sing alongs and dammit did they ever kick out the jams. Seriously one of the best shows I have ever seen. It was almost like I wrote the set list or something, because they played every single song that I absolutly love. One of the better days I've had in my 31 years. Christ. 31 years.

And finally, finally, finally -- someone took a good picture of me:



posted by Jeff Copetas

7.22.2002

OK, so yeah. I'm back from San Francisco. I took a week off from blogging because I was busy with work out there. So I am sorry to all 8 of my readers for not updating the site. There was too much going on for work and San Francisco is way too cool a city to be sitting inside writing dumb shit on my website. Now that I am back to "normal" life, I will now resume writing all about the dumb shit I encounter along the way.

So let's get started, no? I saw Robin Williams' house in San Francisco. It's in a section of town called, I believe, "Sea Cliffs." And holy shit, what a house. I mean, simply unreal. I wish I could've gotten inside and taken a look around. I read in the paper that it's his birthday today, so maybe he took himself to some remote island for his own birthday. Who knows. It didn't look like anyone was home, though. I took a picture of it with a disposable camera (very high quality shit there, partner).

I've been to SF quite a few times (10, maybe) and every time I go there, I love it even more. Without sounding too hippy-dippy, it's simply a beautiful place to be. Doug Sahm was a smart man, staying there for as long as he did. If you don't know who Doug Sham is, do yourself a damn favor and get this album, will ya? Seriously. He might be one of the most underrated musicians ever. He's also dead.

Speaking of beautiful houses, I did get to go inside our CEO's house. Damn sam, that was a nice house. Situated snugly into the Berkeley hills, this house had a modern flair and a kitchen that was bigger than the entire first floor of my, uh, mansion in Somerville, MA. Oh yeah, and did I mention that he has a wine cellar in his basement with something like 100 cases of wine, dating all the way back to the 1960s? And an 8-person hot tub overlooking the Bay Area? What a palace. Makes me want to try harder.

And where else can you play blackjack, win on your first hand and then buy t-shirts (with former president Nixon's name on them) from some sort of odd secret stock? Only in Emeryville, baby. Only in Emeryville. Always remember, Jeff is hovering just four feet above your body, no matter what time of day it is. Four feet.


posted by Jeff Copetas

7.15.2002

Took another 6am flight to NYC this morning, this time, though, I ended up in San Francisco, where I'll be all this week. I'm too tired to even think of anything remotely interesting to write. I can tell you I'll be visiting both Pac Bell and Network Associates Coliseum again. I've been both places already and I like 'em both....bye. And stuff.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.12.2002

This is a classic example of just taking things a little too friggin' far, okay? If you didn't click it, it's a missive about the introduction of an HIV-positive muppet to the Sesame Street cast in South Africa. This ridiculous idea was hatched for the sole purpose of educating children about the dangers of HIV, because it's spreading like wildfire and spanning the Globe in all it's badness. Okay, maybe just in South Africa. But come on - are you serious? An HIV-infected muppet? What's next - will the Carvel cake mascot be Jimmy The Junkie instead of Fudgie the Whale so all young ice cream eaters can be informed about the dangers of heroin and other illegal substances? Or wait - instead of Barney the Dinosaur we can have Sandy the Slutbag, put on this great Earth with the sole intention of scaring young females about the horrific dangers of prostitution.

Come to think of it, god damn, this could actually be great fun! Introduce all kinds of shady characters to the young children in order to completely sap all the fun out of their lives as early as possible and put the fear of god in them before they learn just how insane this world really is. Great idea! I mean, there's really no need to just let kids be kids and enjoy their young lives by having endless amounts of fun sucking on popsicles, singing along to the Piggly-Wiggly's (I made that name up) or those Australian dudes whom my niece and nephew love so much. It's just too much to ask for us to stop throwing our kids in the air and watching them laugh endlessly about it. Or wiggling your finger in their face as they watch, completely bewildered and laughing, as if your finger had some kind of magic booger on it that was telling jokes in a tongue only a little farting, shitting, drooling happy baby could understand. What? I am off on a tangent!

Wait a second, I just thought of a new one - The Howdy Booty Show. Howdy Booty could be an over-sexed maniac of a wooden-puppet who doesn't use condoms and continuously is at the doctor's office getting shots to cure his STD ailments. It would show the kids the dangers of not using protection and it would discourage the crazy antics of all the wooden puppets out there, those pigs. I'm going to go think of more, now......this is fun.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.11.2002

I've never been one to eat tons of Jello or anything, but I always thought Jello was decent stuff. Come to think of it, I probably have not eaten Jello in a couple of years. But today I have come across a horrific discovery that will prevent me from ever eating, looking at, or even thinking about Jello ever again. Jello is made from the parts of an animal that are left over after they've already used it for traditional cuts (like you see in your supermarket), SPAM, sausage, and scrapple.* All the leftover parts - hides, bones, etc are used to make Jello. Just thinking about that makes my stomach turn. So if you ever see this again, please do not eat it:



Here's an amusing baseball story, as told by professional umpire Tim McLelland, after he was asked "what's the funniest thing any manager ever said to you during an argument:"

McClelland: Oh boy. A long time ago at a game in Triple-A, Jack McKeon was the manager in Omaha. He came out and said “I know you got that call right, but I have a big, full house here and my team isn’t playing very well. Can we just stand out here and argue a little bit? I am just going to stand here and bob my head and raise my hands a little bit, but I am not mad at you. I just want to put on a little bit of a show. When I’m done you run me and I’ll go to the dugout." I said, “That’s fine, whatever you need to do, go ahead and do it.” So I told him I had a good dinner last night at [local restaurant] and asked if he’s ever been there. He said no, and started kicking the dirt and raising his hands and said “but maybe I should try it out sometime! Well, I think this was enough, why don’t you run me now.” So I did and he walked away.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.10.2002

Two funny things happened to me last week:

1. Was driving down Route 2 in Concord, MA when we saw an elderly woman walking down the highway. Very odd to see an old woman walking, especially on Route 2, which is a two-lane and quite a busy roadway used by many vehicles to get in and out of Boston. So there's this elderly lady walking down Route 2, and she's flapping her arms like a bird. Flap flap. Very odd. There's a possibility this wouldn't be funny at all for a few reasons - maybe she's lost, maybe she's delirious, maybe she's insane. Whatever. You couldn't help but laugh.

2. Was at the beach on July 4th and two dudes were tosssing a football back and forth about 10 feet from us. They're complete lunkheads, talking about how dark each other will be after a day at the beach, blah blah blah, when suddenly one of the guys throws the football........and it's in mid-air, sailing across the sun-soaked sky, a perfect spiral intended to hit it's target......until a dumb-ass seagull flies directly into it. Both the ball and the seagull come crashing down to Earth as if they had been shot. The seagull, clearly shocked and bewildered (and stupid, as they all are), looks around and struggles up, shakes it off, and flies off. I let out a yell "holy crap! did you see that???!!!!!!!!" Good stuff.


posted by Jeff Copetas

7.9.2002

So....how would you like to wake up one morning at 6am and find this happening? One part hilarious, another part disturbing, and certainly worthy of mention on this website.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.8.2002

Yesterday I woke up at 7:30am and headed out to the gym (I know, 7:30am + Sunday morning + going to the gym = insane) and when I stepped outside, I looked around and noticed that our neighborhood was........yellow. It was weird. I used to work in video production and sometimes we would put color shades over the lighting to give something a hue - that's what it was like. Yellow. So Stephanie and I wondered for a bit why the heck it was yellow outside, and we found out that because of the forest fires up in Quebec, the smoke was drifting southeast. Very odd.

We ended up at Crane's Beach again on the 4th - never in my life have I been so happy just floating in the Atlantic Ocean water on a 95 degree day. Upon return, we watched the Boston fireworks with some of Stephanie's friends from out-of-town. Originally we had planned on standing on the Harvard Square bridge and watching the show, but since it was approximately 257 degrees outside, we ended up watching them from a pizza restaurant in Harvard Square. Air conditioning, a flat-screen plasma TV and something like 45 speakers made it seem like we were there. Sort of.

What a week for air conditioning to celebrate its 100th anniversary! For four straight days last week, we were inundated with some of the most stifling humidity I can recall. It was horrendous. My appetite and my energy were just sapped all week long. Thank god for the AC in the bedroom - I would have never slept through that hell.

I'm on the verge of a major smoothie kick. I can feel it. Stephanie's friend, Laura Simpson, stayed with us last week and she gave me the rundown on the right kinds of smoothie's. My next step is to replace our blender from 1962 and start kicking some smoothie ass. I've already made a couple (mostly strawberry-banana) but next time I shop I'll be buying some serious smoothie-making ingrediants.
posted by Jeff Copetas

7.3.2002

Was leafing through my old vinyl records yesterday and I pulled out Tom Petty's Long After Dark, not really my favorite Tom Petty album, but it has a few great songs on it, including one my all-time favorite Petty songs, "Change of Heart." Anyway, I was looking at the cover of the album and I noticed that it was kinda beat up, and upon looking at it closer, discovered what looked like my handwriting, not ON the cover, but the cover was used as something hard to write on. In other words, I had put paper on top of it for the purposes of having something hard to write on, because I was probably lying on my bedroom carpet or something, and you can't just write on a piece of paper if it's on carpet.

I could barely make out what I had written, but I could tell is was a lot of numbers, which led me to believe I was keeping score of something, maybe a baseball or hockey game on television or whatever. I don't know. My whole point is that it was weird to see my handwriting back when I was 12 or whatever. I don't have many keepsakes that have my handwriting from that time (geez, 18-20 years ago now), so it was interesting to see how much my "5" has changed.

Today, apparantly, is the 100th anniversary of air conditioning. I must say that I honestly believe that air conditioning is one of the five greatest inventions of the 1900's. Am I serious? I'm not sure. I suppose the television, the automobile, the airplane, etc etc are all on a grand scale, but air conditioning is vital to my world. Probably moreso than airplanes.

The Fleetwood Mac albums of the 1970s with Lindsey Buckingham might be some of the best radio pop laid down to tape. Lots of people don't see what a genius Buckingham was, and if you don't, just have a look at what they've done before he was there and after he left. That really tells a story.


posted by Jeff Copetas

7.1.2002

If every weekend were like the one that just passed, I'd be one happy camper:

Friday: we saw what I consider to be this year's best movie so far. About A Boy was funny, sad, quirky and uplifting all at once. The dialogue, too, was simply superb - Nick Hornby (who wrote the book) is quickly becoming my favorite cult hero. Even Hugh Grant was terrific in this movie, but the star was the young boy, Marcus (not sure what the actor's name was), who was so convincing and played the ultimate funny/sad character I've seen in quite a while. And his haircut - hilarious. Highly recommended. As an added bonus, the soundtrack is almost exclusively performed by Badly Drawn Boy, and it's a keeper.

Saturday was Stephanie's birthday, so after she went to bed Friday night I replaced our current, kinda boring, off-white rug with a new, green-and-purple rug that exactly matched the new couch and curtains in the living room. So when she woke up the next morning, there it was in all it's glory. Yee-haw. That was cool. After that, it was off to Crane's Beach (I'm blogging vicariously through my friend Dan, there) for an afternoon of sand, sun, and getting my ankles wet with that 58 degree water. You can forget about me going into that water beyond that. So we had a very relaxing afternoon and topped it off with a night at Dali, otherwise known as one of the best restaurants in the world! And the food was just frickin' amazing, even though they forgot to bring us 4 out of our 6 tapas. Whoops. Eventually we got them. Either way, it's not a bad thing to have to sit in Dali a little longer than usual. Happy birthday, Steph!

Yesterday was spent at a bar-b-que at a friends house, with what seemed like tons of children and pregnant women walking around. Fun was had. I capped off the weekend by going out to The Middle East (Cambridge nightclub) at 11:30pm - that's right, 11:30pm - to see Jay Bennett & Edward Burch perform songs from their damn brilliant new CD The Palace at 4am, and they were just huge. What a way to end the weekend. It was super-tough having to leave the house at 11:15 last night to go see this, but I am so glad I did it, because they put on one hell of a show. The album is pretty rich with instruments, and they pulled it off so well on stage that I considered buying a second copy of the CD just to support them. I didn't, but I thought about it. Anyway, this is the third time I've made reference to this album here, I know, but it's just so damn worthy, and now that I've seen them live, I like the album even more.


posted by Jeff Copetas