My interview with VOIVOD/ex-METALLICA bassist Jason Newsted on Friday went really well.  I am still editing the nearly twenty minutes worth of audio I got from the interview so be looking for it on the website this week.

After I got off the air Friday, Rebecca and I left for Fort Mill, SC, home of Carowinds.  We stayed the night at the Holiday Inn Express directly across the street from the theme park so we could hit the ground running when they opened at 10 a.m.  The crowd wasn’t as bad as I had expected considering it was a Saturday in late June.  It was, however, hotter than I had anticipated as we both hit Boomerang Bay, the water park section before noon and spent a good bit of time there but not before I hit the new ride, the Carolina Cobra which was badass!

After walking around on hot concrete and getting sunburnt despite the fact we were both wearing SPF 50 sunblock, we left shortly after 5 p.m. and drove into Rock Hill, SC, home of my alma mater, Winthrop University for a little scenic drive down memory lane for myself.

After getting home and unpacking, I took it easy for the rest of the weekend being as I was in too much pain to do much of anything!  Thankfully, I am back to 100%!

Man, what a week this has been!  So much has transpired this week that it seems so unreal!  Our Governor Mark Sanford runs off to Argentina for some extramarital activities, Ed McMahon dies on Tuesday, Farrah Fawcett loses her fight with cancer followed by Michael Jackson’s succumbing to cardiac arrest yesterday.  WTF’s next?!

In light of all the events that have taken place in the world this week, my petty actions seem trivial.  However, it is my duty to share with you my twisted world despite how inconsequential it may be.  Having said that, I finally watched Role Models starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as a couple of guys who are court ordered to do community service by being ‘Big Brothers’ to a couple of troubled youths.  I knew I would enjoy the film but I didn’t expect it to be as hilarious as it was!  You gotta see it!

Role Models  \m/  \m/  \m/  \n

Wednesday morning I got up just a little earlier than normal to go catch the 9:30 a.m. showing of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Overall, I enjoyed the film though it wasn’t nearly as good as the first.  The sequel’s plot was weak, the dialogue was lame but the action and special effects were amazing!  The eye candy, for the most part, made up for the script’s shortcomings but I’m not sure I can forgive the writers for the characters of Mudflap and Skids whose comic relief was painfully awful as they reminded me of Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - only times two!  Still, the film is worth taking in in the theater for all the eye candy: amazing special effects and MEGAN FOX!!!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  \m/  \m/  \m/ \n

After the movie, I met with Hugo Ferreira, frontman for TANTRIC and his record rep, Bebop for some lunch at P.F.Chang’s.  They were coming in to promote the band’s new single “Mind Control” and Hugo even came into the studio with me for a few when I went on the air.

Speaking of which, I gotta hit the airwaves and prep for my interview with former METALLICA bassist Jason Newsted!  WOOHOO!!!

Before I dive into the rundown of my weekend, I have to give my two cents on the remake of Friday the 13th which I rented Tuesday night on its release date.  I liked how they combined elements of the first three original films to cover Jason’s background including the death of his mother, his shrine to her including her rotten head and his finding the hockey mask.  That pretty much ended my appreciation of the film as I was just not impressed.  No real complaints.  Just not impressed.

Friday the 13th  \m/  \m/  \n

The very next morning I had to get up extremely early and head to the Waffle House on Asheville Highway in Spartanburg.  I got there around 6:30 and had a terrific breakfast with a waffle, bacon, eggs and hashbrowns to get me going.  I then put my game face on and greeted some WH customers before actually getting behind the counter to flip some hashbrowns, scramble some eggs and make a waffle!  It was a ball, but I’m no cook by any means!

Friday night Rebecca brought over The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and a very naked Marisa Tomei.  This film was absolutely terrific - and Marisa Tomei naked wasn’t bad, either!  And seeing her strip made me really want to go to a strip club myself!  The movie made me worry about being a one-trick pony myself as I am really only good at radio.  Seriously!  Thankfully you can grow old in radio!

The Wrestler  \m/  \m/  \m/  \m/

Saturday I went in to do my Saturday morning air shift and then went home and finished watching My Name is Bruce, a fun film starring Bruce Campbell as his campy self who unwittingly takes on an ancient Chinese demon thinking he is just making another bad low budget horror film.  For what it’s worth, it’s a horrible exploit into the B-movie genre for which Bruce Campbell is so well known for but, by the same token, it’s meant to be as it serves as a parody for the genre and for the man himself.  Fun if you can handle some mindless tongue-in-cheek cheese!

My Name is Bruce  \m/  \m/  \m

Saturday night Rebecca and I went up to Boiling Springs for a little shindig at Trevor and P.A.’s house, the owners of BLVD Music, sponsors of Upstate Unsigned - shameless plug in my own blog!  LOL!  They were having some food and beverages including a delicious low country boil.  We had a great time talking with some friends and fellow musicians and tossing back a few vodka and cranberries!

On Sunday, my family gathered at my aunt and uncle’s house for another shindig as my cousin Tonya was in town from Portland, Oregon.  We all stuffed ourselves with hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans and the whole nine yards and waited less than the recommended time before hitting the pool (don’t do this at home, kids!).  My cousin Ray and I along with his friend and brother-in-law Mikey all made asses of ourselves trying to dive onto one of the water floats.  I ended up getting some sun on my back - a part of me that rarely ever sees the sun!

After getting home I dried off and laid around for a while before heading to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things including the new Ghostbusters video game which Ray and I had talked about earlier in the day.  So, intrigued, I went to Wal-Mart on a mission!  I got some drinks for the fridge then grabbed a Ghostbusters T-shirt and the new video game of the same name for PS3.  So far I’m really enjoying the game though I’m still getting used to the controls.  I think it’s time to wind down my rambling and go bust some ghosts!

….well not really but it sure seems that way!

Before I get to the weekend, I had copies of the new Clint Eastwood flick Gran Torino to give away all last week so I had to watch it when it came out on Tuesday!  Eastwood plays an old racist veteran from the Korean War who befriends, oddly enough, a family of Asians.  I found it strangely similar to Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Bad Santa in that the main character is a hardass who begins to soften in a very subtle way.  Ridiculous parallel for two great but vastly different films.

Gran Torino  \m/  \m/  \m/  \m/

Also over the course of the week, I watched Tom Hanks’ very first film, a slasher flick from 1980 called He Knows You’re Alone which is actually a fairly good one from the genre.  I’m not going to officially review it since it’s almost 30 years old, but I figured it deserved honorable mention considering most people are not familiar with it.

Friday night, Rebecca brought over Marley and Me which she had already seen but I had not.  It was a heartwarming story about a couple and their life with their beloved but misbehaving dog, Marley.  All I can say is that I am glad it ended when it did because I was losing the battle of holding back an ocean of tears.  Yeah, I’m a pansy!

Marley and Me  \m/  \m/  \m/  \n

Saturday I had to get up fairly early and head out to Auto Zone on Anderson Road in Greenville for a live broadcast for Havoline with Deposit Shield.  It was pretty hot so I stayed in the shade and enjoyed some Papa John’s pizza and ice cold Cheerwine while giving away prizes including $25 Texaco with Techron gift cards with the Havoline hottie Erica.

Afterwards, I went out to the Shriner’s Hospital benefit show in Mauldin and hung out with some fellow musicians and caught a few great local bands including GHOST IN THE MACHINE whom I gave an introduction for on stage.

I got home a little before six and had some dinner while waiting for my cousin Ray to meet me at my apartment so we could head Mike Burket’s house to plot and conspire about starting a new project of original material.  When we got there I unwittingly stepped right into a fire ant hill getting the little bastards all in my left shoe and suffering a couple of bites on my left ankle and a bite on my right hand as I tried to clear them away.  I ended up having to abandon my shoes until we left a few hours later.

Again I slept in Sunday morning being the only day I was able to do so.  Actually, I got up at my usual time just couldn’t find the motivation to make it to church.  I did watch Charles Stanley on TV!  For most of the day I watched TV and napped on the couch to make up for not sleeping in!

Later my mom took my Aunt Pat out to dinner for her birthday and wanted me to come.  I told her I couldn’t because I was broke and wouldn’t get paid until today.  However, I ended up calling and checking my savings account balance on the phone to see how much money I had to go and grab myself a cheap bite to eat for dinner only to discover my check had been deposited on Saturday!  I immediately called Mom and told her I’d be on my way and met them at Copper River in Easley.  I ordered the blackened tuna filet sandwich which was simply amazing and followed it with the equally amazing moosetracks brownie sundae!  My stomach seriously just rumbled as I am writing this!

After dinner, I ran by Robbie and Vanessa’s house since they live nearby in Powdersville.  I just sat and killed some time waiting for my old college friend Christopher Doehling to get into town from visiting friends in Clemson.  Chris is the guy who worked on the Disney animated film Bolt and is back in South Carolina from Los Angeles visiting family and friends.

Before he arrived, I also took in a little shopping at Wal-Mart to pick up a few groceries, this Cookie Monster shirt I am currently sporting and the Star Trek movie trilogy on Blu-ray including The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home.  As soon as I got home, Chris called me and we met up at IHOP, but I of course was too full to put anything in my body besides water!  It was great to get to see my good friend from my college days since it’s been over a decade now since we both graduated.

I went home, popped in The Search for Spock and watched most of it before hitting the sack and waking up this morning to start another grand week at work!

It was an amazing weekend this past weekend which I will get to shortly.  First off, I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Rebecca last Monday - which we finished just in time to catch the debut of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Brad Pitt, as usual, shows that he is much more than some Hollywood sex symbol as he truly is a great actor as he portrays a character who has a rare condition in which he is born old and wrinkled and grows up as an old man but grows younger with age - even to infancy before dying.  I don’t mean to give anything away, but there is so much more to the film than the main character’s unusual condition that it does serve as the backbone of the film.  Just go watch it, damn it!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button  \m/  \m/  \m/  \m/

Conan took over the legendary Tonight Show with a strong but slightly awkward debut but got into the groove very quickly.  I actually enjoyed the second night moreso than the first as Tom Hanks was a much better guest than Will Ferrell and I LOVED the meteor knocking Hanks straight back in his chair!  GREEN DAY was also more enjoyable than PEARL JAM was the first night though I’m not crazy about either band.  At the end of the show, GREEN DAY’s drummer, Tre Cool was sitting awkwardly next to Tom Hanks as if he was scared of him and bolted as soon as Conan said good night!  Maybe Tom was scared of GREEN DAY!

Friday night I chilled at home after work as my mom and Rebecca went to go see Stomp at the Peace Center.  I was resting and getting ready for a big day up at BLVD Music the next day.  I got up fairly early to work on the air from 10 til 2 pm and had Dex on live from 11 til 1 pm at the grand reopening of Del Taco in Boiling Springs which is bizarre because I was live at BLVD Music from 3 til 5 pm just down the road from there in Boiling Springs later that same day.

I got there just in time to see TEN GRAND LEG wrap up their set and make way for JOHNNY SUEDE AND THE RADIO JUNKIES featuring Mike Burket formerly of GHOST IN THE MACHINE on guitar.  Mike then pulled double duty as he remained onstage for THE OTHER BROTHERS getting Lehman from TEN GRAND LEG back up on the drum kit.  It was quite hot out there so I avoided the sun as much as I could since I didn’t apply any sunblock.

Before hitting the stage, I asked Burket about getting together to form a new project of original material since we both have a lot of the same influences ranging from thrash to progressive metal and then some.  He said he had been working on some new material for just such a project so we exchanged numbers and are currently working on mapping out our ideas and personnel.  I’ve been wanting to work with him since meeting him in the earlier stages of GHOST IN THE MACHINE but, when he left the band, he understandably wanted to take a break from playing in a band.  So, since my latest band TRAGEDY CHAPTER had just recently split, I figured I’d try again and it seems the time is right!  I’m crossing my fingers and hopefully I’ll have more good news soon!

After Bands on the BLVD was over, Trevor, P.A., Melissa, Rebecca and I went over to Fatz Cafe for some food and spirits!  I wasn’t extremely hungry so I ordered the Honey BBQ Chicken Nachos which was probably the most amazing appetizer I’ve ever had!  Yummy!  It was great to get to sit and chill with Trevor and P.A. since they’ve been so wonderful with helping out with the local show being the official sponsor of Upstate Unsigned!

Afterwards, Rebecca and I went to Blockbuster to exchange one of my online movies for some Swedish vampire flick called Let the Right One In.  The cover of the DVD boasted that it was “The best vampire film.  Ever.” which was a quote from I believe the Washington Examiner.  I have to say I TOTALLY disagree.  I would agree that it was maybe the most original vampire film yet, but I was not blown away with anything in the film save for one of the last scenes which almost makes the rest of the movie worth it.  Almost.  Here is the scene so you don’t have to endure the entire film, but be warned it is a bit graphic:

Maybe had there been more scenes like this in the film, I would have enjoyed the movie more.  That and maybe I should have turned off the horrible dubs and went with the English subtitles!  People that do voice-over work in films must be the worst actors you can find that can’t get a gig otherwise!  I mean it’s horrible!

Let the Right One In  \m/  \m/

I slept in on Sunday and Rebecca talked me into going to Discovery Island, a water park in Simpsonville.  It’s relatively small but, considering it’s only ten bucks to get in, it’s not bad.  So we got there, got a locker to put up our flip-flops, beach towels, keys, etc and applied some sunblock so we wouldn’t cook like out-of-season turkeys!  We started out in the lazy river floating on inner tubes and then hit the slides.

After a while, Becca decided to lay out and get some sun so I thought I’d brave the surf simulator thingy.  As I had figured, I had no clue as to what I was doing as I spun around in circles on the body board under the fire of the jet streams.  However, my clueless stunts apparently looked cool because some kid came up to me later and said I did an awesome job.  Then again he may have just been trying to be nice or was talking to someone behind me, I’m really not sure!  LOL!

After all that, I had worked up an appetite so I grabbed a Double Stacker at Burger King and went home while Rebecca headed to her parents’ house for dinner.  While resting I began to notice some sunburnt areas I had apparently missed when applying sunblock like the fronts of my biceps, my knees and the fronts of my ankles.  Needless to say, those spots have provided me with more than mild nuisances coming back to work today!

Saturday morning I had to get up relatively early and head to Greenwood with Dex for our remote at AT&T.  It was a very warm, sunny day and we got to meet a lot of Greenwood P1s!  Before leaving, I took advantage of being on location a few stores down from Marble Slab Creamery as I went in and had them make me a milkshake combining both cheesecake and blueberry ice creams flavors for a delicious blueberry cheesecake milkshake!  YUM!  Also before leaving, apparently Dex got bit by a fire ant, but I wasn’t aware of it until a few minutes ago when he showed me the red, swollen area on his left forearm!  I hate those things!

After the live broadcast at AT&T, I went to go see the new horror flick directed by Evil Dead/Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell.  The movie is about a young woman who is trying to get promoted to assistant manager at a loan office.  Pressured to take charge in order to get the promotion, she denies an elderly gypsy woman a third extension on the mortgage on her house which is being foreclosed.  The woman then begins to beg thus making a scene forcing security to escort the old woman off the premises which brings shame to the gypsy and invokes anger and retribution in the form of a curse which summons a demon to come and drag the young woman to Hell to burn for eternity.

Granted the film is no Evil Dead or Spider-Man, but it is filled with numerous ‘jumping’ suspense scenes and a lot of ridiculous and gory elements you would expect from a Raimi film.  Plus, his trademark yellow Oldsmobile which shows up in all of his films (except for The Quick and the Dead since it was a western) is actually the vehicle driven by the elderly gypsy woman in the film.

Drag Me to Hell  \m/  \m/  \m/  \n

The movie didn’t scare me as bad as I thought it would having come from a strict Southern Baptist upbringing where ‘fire and brimstone’ are common themes in their weekly sermons.  I think the ridiculous elements of the film helped take my focus off the grim horrific nature of the overall theme of the film.  This was a relief considering I am truly terrified of Hell and still sometimes feel like a wretched hellbound soul as a result of years of condemning and belittling sermons from my childhood church despite the fact I am a born again Christian who now attends a non-denominational community church.

However, the film did disturb me enough to choose a comedy for later that evening so I went to Blockbuster to trade Fanboys in for Paul Blart: Mall Cop starring Kevin James and my future wife Jayma Mays.  The film was a rather decent comedy about a mall cop (go figure!) who hasn’t been lucky in love but meets an attractive redhead in the mall who gets taken hostage on Black Friday by a group of thugs who are trying to rob the mall.  Of course, our hero takes charge and saves the day thus rescuing and getting the girl.

Paul Blart:  Mall Cop  \m/  \m/  \m

Sunday I just had lunch with my Aunt Pat, Uncle James Ray, cousin Ray and his wife Erin and their son Jay and then I came home to do some dishes and some laundry (I took out the trash on Saturday) and relaxed for most of the day.  I love being lazy on Sundays!