Blog Relocation

Anyone looking at this blog can now go to:

http://billeager.com/blog/

Where awesome things will now happen.

Bye.

Rolling Stone

Hey, so some free radical in the blogosphere decided to review Another Life On Mars, and track by track at that! You can read the review here.  It’s very detailed and well thought out.

I’m still held back with the cast, but hopefully only until the end of the month, and then I can start PT.  Just in time to be ready for late spring/summer.

Not mcuh to mention at the moment but I wanted to post that review, and let you all know that I’m still hobbling around.  And planning more music stuffs.

New Album released!

Super sexy artwork! Thanks, me!

For anyone who hasn’t heard, my new album, Another Life On Mars, landed today.  Download yourself a donation-supported copy by clicking here: Bill Eager – Another Life On Mars.

For those who also haven’t heard, I managed to break my ankle in two places (small fractures on fibula and tibia, plus high ankle sprain) while snowboarding.  Exciting!  I’m in a cast and everything.  Funny thing is, it took me until I was almost 25 to break a bone (at least that I was aware of).  I have been gimpy before, but this one should take the cake.

Like I stated below, someone or something is really trying to slow me down for something.  First a right flat tire, then a right flat ankle.  Unfortunately, you can’t take an ankle to Goodyear and walk out good as new.  Even though I’d pay 10 times as much to do it.

The accident actually didn’t happen while snowboarding, but while exiting a chairlift and slding down an icy hill.  Interestingly as it turns out, I am not the only person I know who has done this very thing.  Who knew?  Frozen mountain sports can be dangerous!

Anyway, my cast is weird but I’m getting used to it.  I really have to eat well and stay rested, because there will be no real workouts for this guy.  Obviously I’m disabled, but with a broked ankle, I definitely won’t be skating for a while.  I’ll be missing the rest of the snowboard season too… but it might be time for a break from that business anyway.

If you know me in person you can sign my cast.  Just make sure you sign it in something that contrasts well against dark blue.  Which isn’t much.

Busy Beags

Is it really already almost March?  Is that right?  That’s crazy.

It seems that I can’t be slowed down for anything, and I’m not so sure how comfortable I am with that.  Right now, I feel like I have my priorities in order.  However, it seems that aside from my priorities, there’s nary a moment for anything else.  Unfortunately, some of the non-priorities are things like housework (much yet to be done), songwriting (much a part of my mental health), and blogging (which I’m actually doing right now).

I realized this today as I was driving to my hockey game.  Right about here I found myself pulled over with a flat tire.  Sitting on the side of the road, waiting for the silent tire sniper from AAA to show up, I started to think about how busy I keep myself, and how much I rely on my ability to stay as busy as I am.  It would be crushing to me to be sidelined by something like car troubles, bodily injury, imprisonment, or displacement.  I eventually got an assist and had a donut put on my right rear, and was on my way (at a still-agonizing 35MPH).

Not gonna find this guy on Yahoo Sports, but you'll find him on comedy shorts

I did made the second and third period of my hockey game.  I belong to a team called the Ice Road Puckers, and I can honestly say that we’re the worst hockey team ever.  Well, at least we’re the worst hockey team possible.  Through the winter season and playoffs, we went a perfect 0-24, with many football-like scores sprinkled in there.  We’re only starting to shape our game up now, only a bit too late to make any difference, but I think we’re all having fun, and that counts for a lot.  Personally, I have 2 goals and an assist through the regular season, which isn’t a lot at all, but I’ve developed a lot as a player, and it’s a much more grueling and exciting workout than going to the awful gym (plus, fewer meatheads).  I also discovered that I’m a fairly decent defenseman, if not only because I generally suck on offense.

But aside from hockey, I am working a lot and trying my hardest to spend time with Liz and my other friends.  Other things get tossed by the wayside, however, and it’s weird to turn on your own TV (which you pay dearly for, William), and realize you haven’t watched it in a long time.

This particular week has been long, though.  Work requires overnight shifts about once a month, which can be very disorienting.  My job maintains a very vibrant “work hard, play hard” attitude, and I take that to heart.  The devil in the details of that slogan, however, is that it requires a lot of work, and a lot of play.  There is also the vague and looming possibility of my job completely taking over my life.  More on that later, when it actually might mean something.

Everything has been so crazy that I have completely fallen out of touch with my former bandmates.  I feel bad, because it seems like if it’s not there, it doesn’t exist.  I don’t have the social discipline to keep all the plates spinning, so to speak.  To extend the analogy (and oh, I love to do that!), I spin only a couple of plates really really fast.

I’ve been trying hard to finish up an album for RPM 2009.  I’m a long way along, but I need to really finish things up in the next day if I want to be successful.  Music right now, however, is really a secondary thing, and it hurts me severely to recognize that in my life.  My songwriting feels detached, and it’s difficult for me to accurately portray the way I feel in what I write.  I can still do it, just not with the speed and natural flow that I could back in 2002 or 2004/2005.  Part of this is that I’m much more critical of what I write and how I write.  I would toss a lot of the material I came out with in the earlier part of this decade as being far too trite or totally devoid of purpose, strength, or cohesion.

I’m recording differently now, too.  Before, I had the patience and tolerance to record lazily with lots of programming, sequencing, copy/paste, and all that.  Now, I strive for something more organic.  I even sprung for some drums to support a more natural feel.  Electronic drums, because of my neighbor issues (there are other people in the building), but something I can slap and beat humanly nonetheless.  Some of it will come out in my new album… if I ever get it done!

I’m surviving the recession (depression?) rather well.  I’m gainfully employed.  That is very good for me right now, and I plan to ride it out this way.  Though I may need to do car repair, which might run me some good money.  I know people who are less fortunate and have lost jobs or hours.  My heart goes out to them.

A lot of people who work in the auto industry that I know have lost jobs.  That’s a pretty interesting thing to look at right now.  American automakers are all bankrupt, and need to get bailed out to stay afloat.  My dad asked me this evening if I would buy a car from a bankrupt automaker.  I don’t know if he’s considering it, considering it for me, or only speaking hypothetically, but it got me thinking.  On one hand, you would immediately think that they’re unsuccessful because they’re making an inferior product, so you shouldn’t buy it.  On the other hand, you have to consider the impact of labor costs in relation to the labor costs of foreign automakers, and how staying competitive in sales could possibly make you bankrupt.  That could be enough to wash out the inferiority argument.  You could also say, though, that these automakers are irresponsible, so their product must, by association, be irresponsible and unsafe.

Personally, I’ve not been tremendously happy with my American sedan, but it’s not been a lemon.  Maybe I have low standards.  Here’s hoping she stands up for a few more years.  I’ve already put 85k on her in just over 4 years.

And so, of course, another incoherent post by “The Beager” comes to its abrupt conclusion.  As you can see, I’m very busy.  But doing very well.  Hope you’re all well too.  Until next time, I remain your faithful but annoyingly occupied servant.

Eat till it hurts, America!

So here we are, it’s the end of November, and we’re moments away from starting our final leg of the amazing journey we all call 2008.  I’ve been not blogging for a month, as typically I’ve fallen off the map, being the terrible friend/son/brother I am.  However, I’m back for the moment, as I’ve trekked off to the distant and remote land of Maine to reclaim my sanity, and eat a roasted stupid bird.

It's pretty much like this, but think 70 degrees colder.

Southern Maine is like a miniature Canada.  Both are charming and placid in their own ways, and they both have this peculiar self-awareness that tends toward self-mockery.  Either that or I see both as subtle caricatures of themselves.  Either way, Maine is quite different from the rest of the Union, and it’s quite a bit more beautiful as well, if not completely heartbreaking during the winter months.

After burning all my cylinders for so long, it’s nice to be able to get away for an entire week, which is why the oblique and dull way of life is just what I needed to calm my nerves, and get the creative juices flowing again.  Being here in the summer, as is my usual approach, is a highly rewarding experience, and being here on the opposite end of the season is a therapeutic and equally rewarding experience.

Someday imma play in the big kid leagues!!!

One of the more exciting things about Southern Maine is the fact that you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to go see a hockey game.  Whereas the depressingly underwhelming Buffalo Sabres will get you quite a bit for even the most obscure seat (if you can even find it), their new AHL affiliate, the Portland Pirates, will set you right up on the glass at center ice, for about the price of an eighteen pack of Molson and a pack of cheesy Bratwurst (the ‘teener of Molson and Brats is how I measure most things I buy, for the record).

The AHL consists of three types of players.  The first type, and the most common, is the Riser.  The Riser is the one who went through Juniors and got signed with an NHL franchise, and is getting his legs in the AHL, in preparation for the NHL.  A fairly common breed.  The Riser will ultimately find his way into a permanent position in the NHL, or will fade fast when he doesn’t stack up.

The second type of player is the Slumper.  The Slumper is the player who was sent down from the NHL to the AHL for some “remedial work”.  This is not to be confused with the Riser who got called up to play 2 games in the NHL, filling in for injured players, and then was sent back down.  A Slumper is one you take for granted in the NHL, and it’s shocking to see them sink so low as to be sent to the AHL.

The third and rarest player in the AHL is the Lifer.  You know the type.  He’s the only one on the roster who was born before 1987.  He’s been on the affiliate for 8 years.  He is totally committed to the AHL, and despite how he might really feel, he’ll always say the AHL is where his heart is, and wouldn’t want to play in the NHL anyway.  He’s the guy born in 1979 who plays to an average crowd of about 1,000 for the Lowell Devils.  Yep, I looked it up, his name is Ryan Murphy.  Probably a great guy, but you gotta wonder: Did this guy ever plan to sustain himself by playing AHL hockey?

WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND THAT YOU TAKE OUR MONEY AND GIVE US CHEAP CHINESE CRAP IN RETURN!

So anyway, enough about hockey, and on to more pressing issues.  This year will perhaps be the first in my lifetime where Black Friday will not involve gluttonous amounts of spending and a feverish rush for impractical gifts or implausible deals.  Nah, who am I kidding?  Even in these Hard Economic Times(tm), we’ll still spend as much as ever on Tickle Me Elmo, Cheap-ass DVD players, and the newest High School Musical 4 animated lunchbox.

However, in eight months, the numbers will come out showing that retail sales on Black Friday dropped 1.7% over 2007.  This will trigger panic in the commodities market which will drive the price of oil back up to $150 a barrel, resulting in all that $5.00/gal gas that tree huggers were waiting so eagerly for.  Speaking of which, I have it on good authority that up here in Maine you can get premium-grade gas for $1.71/gal.  That’d be about $1.50 for regular.  I don’t know about you, but last time I checked in Western New York, $1.50 worth of gasoline wasn’t even enough to torch your neighbor’s lawn with!

Great hockey seats, stoic weather, and cheap fuel.  Maine really has it all.  It’s a great change of pace up here, and much better than the mania back in Buffalo.  I swear, that city is going crazy.  For instance, someone torched half of my neighbor’s lawn right before I left.  If that doesn’t give you the willies, I don’t know what could!

Cabela's, like Mecca for rednecks. Rednecca. Complete with guns, and a huge-ass fish.

One other thing that Buffalo’s been palling around with is the idea of putting a Bass Pro shop (complex?  campus?  military base?) right downtown where the Aud used to be.  I was of the opinion that this was a rather frivolous idea, but now, after having visited Cabela’s, a variant on the Bass Pro concept, I can claim with absolute moral clarity, that this is a stupid and reckless idea.

First of all, these big-box outdoors stores are touted as theme parks for the trailer park type, places where people will put themselves up for 6 nights in a hotel just to be there.  These are supposed to be huge magnets for commerce.  I’m sorry to report that this is flatly not the case in the least.  Rather, it’s a dull retail store.  It’s the overfed love child of Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart.  It’s the Mall Of Red America.  It’s a huge, whooped up collection of flannel, fly-fishing trousers, camouflage shotguns, and Jeff Foxworthy Brand Venison Jerky.  There’s nothing attractive about it.

And the fact that they think one of these is going to somehow spark downtown Buffalo back into economic prowess is simply laughable.  First of all, this will create no more than 1 month of commerce in the area.  It will become a big, dead, useless retail flop in the middle of a suitcase-city, only to be closed a year later.  Second, it will attract all of the rednecks into the city of Buffalo.  This is bad.  This needs it’s own paragraph.

Replace"Morans" with "Buffalo". You get the picture.

KEEP THE REDNECKS OUT OF BUFFALO.

If anything, put Bass Pro out in Amherst, or Clarence, or Cheektowaga, or ANYWHERE.  Anywhere but Buffalo!  There’s absolutely no reason why downtown Buffalo, flanked on all sides by classy and decidedly-not-rednecky Irish, Polish, Italian, Black, and Puerto Rican people, needs to house the Taj Mahal of White Trash.  It’s just stupid.

Here’s what you can do.  Plow down the Aud, take the land near the waterfront.  Bulldoze the non-tower part of the Main Place Mall (the part with only 15% of the storefronts occupied).  Bulldoze the old AM&A’s building right across the street.  Take allll of those and build the University at Buffalo there.  Oh, and while you’re at it, move the Buffalo Bills downtown too.  I can guarantee you in gold that within 10 years, downtown Buffalo would sprawl and thrive again.  But nooooo, you clowns want Rednecca.  And that makes me cry at night.  But at least you’re getting rid of the train on Main.  Which is a slow start.  But as we know in Buffalo, one step forward always means three steps back.

So I would like to wash out all of the ranting and negativity I just put forth here and wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.  Remember, the Pilgrims were a bunch of puritan ninnies, so when you go out bright and early on Black Friday and find yourself drawn to all the sexy displays and gluttonous shopping, just remember that you’re insulting everything sacred about Thanksgiving!  Eat till it hurts, America!

Go Vote!

Go vote, don’t think, just do it!  Well okay, think, and then vote!  I mean, don’t rush your thinking, but make sure you think and vote.  And vote and think!

Read ‘Em And Veep

 

SEN. BIDEN: The word is, "Nuclear". GOV. PALIN: Um, uhh. N-U-C-U-L-A-R. Nucular, yeah. Darn right!

 One of the things I love most about United States politics is the amount of word-mincing and pussyfooting required to keep one from committing accidental political seppuku.  I maintain a deep admiration for elected officials who manage to spin their way into not being abrasive or offensive every time they open their mouth to preach to a nation of easily-offended voters.  Bonus points if, in the process of covering their arses, they manage to mention something of actual substance.

If there’s anything that tonight’s vice presidential debate proved, it’s that you can put two potential national disasters up on stage together to debate, and end up with partly cloudy skies and a split decision.  Tonight we saw magic as a completely neutered Joe Biden and a completely diluted Sarah Palin emerged in an underwhelming display of self-control.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, folks (or folk… I still don’t think people read this).  This debate was about Sarah Palin.  Palin, a parody of Tina Fey, has tumbled headlong into a hole with her recent appearances in interviews.  Tonight was her one chance for redemption, where she could prove that she was not the sheltered ignoramus she conveyed herself as.  This was unfortunate for Joe Biden.  Not only was he tasked with minimizing the Enlightenment of Sarah Palin, but he also had to steer the debate away from her to put the debate back on the issues.  This was a very difficult task, being that you can’t set the bar much lower than Palin had to this point, so she was destined to have a huge personal victory in this debate.

So Biden took her seriously.  This was the right way of doing it.  He pressed her on her lack of details.  He tied her back to Bush.  He corrected her and called her a liar.  Palin fought back, dodging and ducking more deftly than she had ever before.  He was respectful but forceful.

Sarah Palin came dangerously close to losing the debate in losing her composure or being completely incoherent.  But she held on.  Joe Biden came dangerously close to winning the debate in blowing straight past Palin in that forceful Biden rhetoric.  But he held back.  Much like a classic superhero story, Biden could not kill the archvillain.  The only way Sarah Palin was going down tonight was through her own fault, which her week of debate school taught her to avoid.

 

Seriously audience, if you even think about applauding or hollering at the candidates, I'll come down there and bust up your neck.

So who’s the real winner here?  It’s not Biden.  He leaves tonight with a draw.  It’s not Palin.  She leaves tonight with the same support she had before, and the same opposition she had before.  It’s not you, the American viewing public.  You didn’t see a trainwreck.  So who is the winner, you ask?  Why yes, it’s Gwen Ifill, who I thought did a great job moderating and asking questions.  She was fair to both candidates, and was pretty hard-hitting, especially going right after Palin about not knowing what a vice president does, and after Biden for saying he wouldn’t be the VP candidate.

 

 Afterwards, the families of the two candidates came up on stage to mingle.  The Biden family was curious to finally meet people from Alaska.  The Palin family was thrilled to finally meet people from America!

Not All Bacons Are Created Equal

Are you a man, a carnivore, a computer programmer, a fan of excellence, or awesome?  If you answered yes to any of those questions (I answered yes to all of them), then you obviously have an extreme devotion to bacon.  Bacon is the sweet fruit of the meat tree, the first pressing of the swine vine, the sacred transfiguration of meat into manna.

Devout Baconists around the world gather at their sacred city, the Fatican, to devise ways of making bacon even more prominent around the world.  Wendy’s, self-proclaimed purveyors of bacon that they are, decided to go further with bacon than anyone in the world ever has.

Behold, the Baconator.  Billed as a double cheeseburger with six strips of luscious, sultry bacon, she stands in her glory like a fabulous wedding cake, stacked high in honor of the glorious marriage between pork and heaven.  Or the marriage between your arteries.  But amazing it looks.  At least, until you order one:

Bless me Porky, for I have blasphemed against the holy image of Bacon.

What you see on the left is the kind of bacon I would feed my own babies.  Bacon should look like a salty, sweaty cosine function.  It should be redder than the Soviet Union and just as thick.  It should look like Carrot Top at the gym.  But the real Baconator does not.  And the sadness does not end in the image of bacon.  The taste of this bacon is not right either!  It’s not real bacon… it’s more like bacon flavored Play-Doh, squeezed through a mold into shapes vaguely resembling bacon.  This sad, sad lack of authenticity is truly a sin against bacon.  The bacon just tastes like rubber.  And this is wrong.  Because when I eat bacon, I want it to taste like bacon.  I want it to get me crunk!

You may have better luck with this sandwich if you just order a double cheeseburger — which will save you over 60%, by the way, and bring your own six strips of bacon.  Careful though, there may be some jealousy and/or greasy pockets.  Oh and when you order that double cheeseburger, make sure you get no condiments or vegetables on it, cause that’s how the Baconator do.  They’re proud of how terrible their bacon tastes, and they won’t have any mustard or lettuce getting in the way of it!

Originally via Blogadilla.

You Know You’re from the 90’s

When someone mentions “I Kissed A Girl” and you think of Jill Sobule.

Arguably the definitive version.

Nothing much to report…

I Think You’re Crazy

 

Thom Yorke thinks you're crazy. And that's saying a lot.

It’s always strange to go through mail and papers from years ago.  Though I am separated from things I may receive or write for any number of years, seeing them instantly brings back their context.  This form of recollection is a little unnerving for me, not only for its uncanniness, but for my conclusion that I may never forget about something I might want to forget.

 

What with all the gloom and doom about the financial sector getting hit today (and no doubt 7% is a large chunk), it’s comforting to me that, as one who lives within his means, I don’t have to worry about it too much.  At the end of the day I can still go about my business as usual, which tonight will include a drank with the kevinator.

I will be finding out soon enough about whether my job will lead me to foreign lands.  They’d better call ahead anyway and have the door heights raised.

I put up two new videos today of me playing cover songs.  I want to fill YouTube with such videos (original music too!) so if you have any requests, leave a comment.