Sunspot: October 2006

Happy Halloween!

I was just recalling some of the fun shows we've had at Halloween... Looking (way) back, there are some photos from our Halloween shows of past years:

2000 at the GridIron (Madison, WI)

2000 at Dudley's (Madison, WI)

2001 at Point's East (Milwaukee, WI)

2003 at Quarters (Milwaukee, WI)
This was the night that Andrew W. K. called Mike on his cell phone right before our show! There are pictures somewhere, we dressed up as The Matrix.... I can't find the pics, though.

2004 at The Annex (Madison, WI)

And, let's not forget the holiday we spent with our good friend Dirty, who was hanging out at Laura's in Chicago, when we stopped there on our way back from somewhere (Almanac Mike, can you help me remember where we were returning from that tour?)

Bat Out Of Hell 3

The new Meat Loaf record comes out tomorrow.

Hot.

State Street Halloween 2006

State Street Halloween 2005
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

Listening to Plucket outside Pizzeria Uno.

Grinder tonight!

Madison's favorite Judas Priest Tribute band, Grinder, is playing tonight at The High Noon Saloon for the Fourth Annual Maximum Ink Halloween Spooktacular.

Also playing will be a tribute to The Misfits and Danzig featuring members of Droids Attack! and Way Off The Horse, a Suicidal Tendencies tribute band, and Yarrrrr! which is gonna be throwing down 80's style.

My windshield...

...needed to be scraped this morning.

:(

Recording at AquaMunkee

We spent the weekend recording all of our new songs at AquaMunkee Studio... We'll use this to help decide and work on which ones will go on the next album!

Also, stay tuned for the video Podcast, recorded live at AquaMunkee's!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE TIMMY!

The Screech Tape Is Real

God help us all.

Sunspot Road Mania - Ep. 27

Drinkin' with the cops!

Join us as we run through field sobriety tests with Madison's finest.

WARNING: The audio's not great, but it's fun. I just threw all the .WAV files together. Featuring guest commentaries by Captain Caveman and Devious.

Listen closely as our condition deteriorates through the evening.

Download Sunspot Road Mania Episode 27 directly.

Blurb in Whitewater Campus Paper

We talk a little bit about MySpace in this article. Our friends in The MAHP from Racine are mentioned as well.

Speaking of, your last chance to see them for awhile is going to be at The Brat Stop in Kenosha this Saturday, 10/21. Mark says he wants to take some time off to write new material and I'm looking forward to hearing it. I really enjoyed, their last CD, Stories (produced by Dammithead Steve Hawkins), and I'm looking forward to hearing more.

On the iPod this morning:

Transceiver by The Nadas

Red Dawn

Yeah, it's 3:00 and I'm still up. I forgot how sweet this movie is.

I wouldn't give it points for realism mostly because C. Thomas Howell will never ever be a badass. But it's got Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Harry Dean Stanton, Powers Boothe, Caroline in the City, and even Baby herself (and nobody puts her in a corner.)

I guess I can see why people don't like some of the jingoism of the film (which isn't as gung-ho as you'd expect in a film about the Soviet invasion of the Midwest) and I know the Russkies aren't the bad guys anymore (and their treatment is relatively fair, have you seen Missing in Action lately? The Russians get a lot more respect than the VC.) but the film is one of the best I've ever seen that illustrates the ricockulousness of foreign occupation (sample line as the Swayz is about to execute a traitor: "What makes us different from them? Because we live here.") That's the whole point, not that the Commies are a bunch of godless bastards, but that it's impossible to control a population that doesn't want to be controlled. There's also a ton of hand grenades being thrown into tank cockpits and that goes a long way for my enjoyment of a film.

John Milius gave us this classic, Apocalypse Now, and Conan The Barbarian (indeed, Conan's dad, the giver of the Riddle of Steel has a big role.) Anyway, good flick, I feel like executing a Rosenberg now.

More Reasons Why YouTube Rules

A little love for the DW fans out there...

Sweet Doctor Who vid to a great Carbon Leaf song

And someone put the whole second episode of Series Two,"Tooth and Claw", up as well. I've gotta got some psychic paper.

Oh yeah, and a video of my man, Captain Jack, set to "Sex Is Not The Enemy" by Garbage!

Or how about "Mr. Brightside" to Rose with Mickey vs. The Doctor vs. Captain Jack!

WARNING: If you haven't seen all of Series One, there's some spoilers in there. And be careful surfing around YouTube because it's spoilerific for Series Two.

If you're not reading Lifehacker...

...every single day, then why not? Today, they link to how to make a great Halloween zombie costume, which should be on everyone's to-do list for next week.

Anyway, Liferhacker has consistently great tips on making your life easier and I appreciate anything that helps me make more time for partying.

Cool WI Book Festival Events

Click here to see the official schedule of book festival events. There's a bunch of cool stuff this year.

First of all, on Sunday at 2pm, there's going to be an event that covers The Beast of Bray Road, which I talked about on here a few weeks ago. The presenter, Linda Godfrey, co-authored a book with Richard Hendricks, who used to run Weird Wisconsin, where my sister and I both contributed stories to. That's at the Wisconsin Historical Museum which is on the Capital Square.

Then, there's a shit-hot panel discussion with the Sandman, himself, Neil Gaiman (I forgot that he lives in Menomonie, WI where the monkey house of a live music venue, Mr. Heavy's, is as well (if you're looking for context, that's the one that's decorated with a huge mural of Satan smoking a joint and half a real police car behind a steel fence in the basement)) and Milwaukeean Stephen King-collaborator, Peter Straub. If you haven't read The Talisman, then maybe you read or saw Ghost Story, which is not only notable for being dances-with-vacuums Fred Astaire's last film, but also for featuring the Borg Queen's snoobs. Anyway, that movie scared the crap out of me and I didn't know it was written by a Wisconsin guy, so extra points. If anyone is going to any of these events, let me know, they sound like a lot of fun.

PROG at the High Noon

Check out our buddy Joe rockin the guitar!

CBGB's Finally Closes

It's a sad day for a club that ended up being a living museum. Sunspot always wanted to play at CBGB's, but the only date that would've worked out would have been Easter Sunday a couple of years ago and we couldn't make time for it on that particular tour.

I hate to be one of those guys that says once they got big, they sold out, but c'mon. And they're planning to relocate to Las Vegas? It closes on October 31st, but it hasn't been an epicenter of culture for a long time. It's kind of just a marketing thing now more than anything else. Hey, I love Blondie. I read the weirdass "alternate theory of consciousness" book that their bassist wrote and I didn't even hate the duet Debbie did with Coolio (no shit) on No Exit, but CBGB's lost some of its specialness when you could buy their t-shirts at Target. I'm not sad that the club is closing because that time is over (thank you, Sarah Jane, for teaching me that lesson on Doctor Who this past weekend), I wish I could've seen it during its heyday, though.

Wendy's DrummerCam: Saturday 10/14/06 @ BBC, Milwaukee, WI

Wendy's DrummerCam: Friday 10/13/06 @ ELB, Rockford, IL

Superphone in action!

The Treo broadcasts live video of a breaking news story on Wednesday. Awesome.

Rockford and Milwaukee This Weekend!

Two chances to party with us this weekend. The first is tonight in ROCKford, Illinois where we return to the ELB. The last two times there were awesome and we can't wait for a repeat tonight! I checked eventful.com and looks like there's not a lot of rock shows in Rockford for today, but there is a instrumental strings Asian three-piece playing at the Methodist Church, so well, I guess that sounds sweet if you wanna go to that instead.

Also, tomorrow we'll be at G-Daddy's BBC in Milwaukee. Get a preview of our November show in Madison, because our friends in Road Agent Spin (former Sin City Injectors) will be there tomorrow as well as the King Club show coming up.

Also, I found something that Caveman Dan and Supercop can do if they're looking for a charity to participate in.

On the iPod right now:

Yeah, so what, I'm in a disco mood.

May the force be with you...

...always.

Mike Huberty has left the geometry center

That's right, click on this link and see what it says at the top of your browser. I think the D. as his middle initial stands for dirty.

Random band finding of the day:
The Dutch Ovens. I find all these cool band names as I'm looking up clubs in different states. Last week it was the pubes and last year I found Dirty Sanchez.

God, Who'd Wanna Be Such An Asshole?

I saw the Born Into This, the documentary on Charles Bukowski, the other night and it's pretty good, I wish I could have seen him perform live. Just an ugly dude sitting at a table, drinking heavily, chain smoking, and reading.

I haven't seen Barfly with Mickey Rourke as Hank, but if anybody wants to watch it soon, let me know. I'm sure it's a downer, but those are okay every once in awhile.

You have new Picture Mail!

Wpooooooooop

Drinkin' with the cops!

Drinkin' with the cops!
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

The whole band's here and we're doing an alcohol workshop so officers can test field sobriety!

Serving the community is hard but we love our town.

The Optimistic

The Optimistic
Originally uploaded by sunspot_mike.

It's chilly at The Terrace tonight. Last show outside for the year and it's always great!

http://www.myspace.com/areyouoptimistic

Wow. Here's a relationship that's going to end badly.

She discovers that her boyfriend is into kiddie porn. And not perfectly acceptable and often magical publications like Barely Legal or 18 and Busty either.

I don't think I'd write to an online Dear Abby about this, I think I'd poison his fuckin' Cheerios before he turns into somebody like the piece of shit who killed those poor Amish girls this week. What do you think his wife knew? Ten years of marriage and she didn't catch any hint of this? The death of their infant daughter must have been a grueling trigger (I was going to make a Nabokov comment too, but I'm trying to down the kitchen sink-ness of my posts) but there wasn't any sign at all in the ensuing 9 years? No one's on the lookout for these things, right, but when you think about the chick who wrote into Prudence wondering what she should do about her boyfriend when she found that picture CD, it makes you realize that a lot of these tragedies might be avoided by facing reality, no matter how sad it is, now instead of later.

Wendy's DrummerCam: Thursday 10/05/06 @ Bobby Rockets, Lyons, WI

Gas Conspiracy

"Just in time for the election" is what I've been hearing from a dozen people about the falling price of gas and while I'm usually the first guy to scream "conspiracy", Slate has an excellent article from their money guy, Daniel Gross, on whether the gas price is being fixed in time for the election. Anyway, it's a good article that at least gives a little background on why the prices are dropping. And Slate's not a bastion of Bush love (well at least not the Presidential kind.)

Current Timewaster:
Jem from Chicks Rockfest's New Homepage
1. Good quotes page, but I'm a sucker for Dylan Thomas.
2. I hope she's got a vibrator be cause her list of needs in a man is ridiculous (check the divorce page).

Currently on the iPod: