Does anyone else remember this?

Cause I do.  Watching Snoop get wheeled out in the wheel chair was a childhood memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.  Ah, to be young again.

When the bummer life get's you down.....

....Stand back up and kick it to the curb. This dude, Dan Caro, is perhaps one of the most awesome people I have ever heard about or witnessed in the medium of video. You can check out his bio here. If you want the long short of it, Dan got toasted by a water heater when he was 2, burning over 70 percent of his body. He lost his hands. Bummer, right? Well, yes. BUT, Dan said "F that noise, Ima play me some drums, dammit." And so he did. And did he ever. Check it:

Dan Caro is a new hero of mine. Dude can flat out play.

Secondly, it was the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen protests yesterday. Now, while I may not know a whole lot about those, I've read a very minimal amount and I found this article very interesting and informative. It gives you a very quick idea of what's up with communism and capitalism in the place I am currently calling home. Also, surprisingly enough, it's not even that long. Bonus.

Happy friday. I land at MSP in 4 weeks. Hoo. F-ing. Ray.

Bill Withers is the man

Also, the drummer is a total G.

Technology!

(taken from awkwardfamilyphotos.com

So I believe I mentioned quite a while ago that youtube has been blocked by China. Well, a few weeks ago they did the same thing to blogger(dot)com. This explains my absence from the realm of this online journal as of late. That, and once again happenings have been happening. Since the last post the weather continued being hot but that provided ample excuse to get my sorry behind outside. So outside I ventured. Next thing that happened was when Ratatat came to town. I don't know why, but for some reason Beijing is getting hit with a slew of fairly decent acts from the US. So back to Ratatat: It was F-ing awesome. The club way oversold tickets, there was no air conditioning, putting the heat somewhere around 115 degrees for the entirety of the show. Although the heat was making some of the people cranky (myself included, bows were thrown) all the hostility melted away when Ratatat came out and rocked the funk out of the crowd. By the end of the show I was soaked completely through with mine and other peoples sweat, so much so that when I got out of the club I took off my shirt and wrung out probably close to a litre of liquid. Sweet, right? Anyways, here's some pictures of the show from rdx913's flickr page:

(Not Ratatat , not even close to the full crowd yet)

I know I wrote semi-excitedly about the race in the last post. Well, funny story, I set my alarm but forgot to turn it on so I didn't wake up in time to rush out to catch the bus., In fact I woke up well after the race had started a good 20k from my apartment. whoops. I have a chance for redemption though. Two weekends from now there is some sort of 'cycling weekend festival' out at the olympic cycling center & velodrome which includes a 40k road race and a 14k team time trial. They're both on sunday the 14th and I plan on riding in both. Here's the rub:

Ghostface is playing the night of the 13th. I will be going to this show. Dammit. I will the roll my sleep deprived, sore, probably a little hungover ass out of bed early on Sunday morning and go race 40k on my bicycle. I will then eat some lunch and power nap somewhere outside and then gear up for a 14k time trial with four other guys that I hope to finish in well under 20 minutes, the idea being this: the faster you go, the shorter the suffering.

Last weekend I went to a mixed martial arts event (think ultimate fighting with even less rules). 8 bucks to go see 12 fights and be surrounded by a whole lotta big dudes (total bro-fest) in small shirts. It was mildly entertaining, and became even more so when the jock jams guy came out to announce the last 6 fights. Hearing him say "Let's get ready to rumballllllllllllll!" was worth 8 bucks in itself (especially since I heard he makes a million everytime he says it, so I got a steal of a deal).

J-Rocc of the Beat Junkies is here this Saturday and I plan on going to that as well.

And to wrap up this pointlessness I'll leave you with a Podcast and a really awesome video inspired by my recent viewing (in the theaters no less) of the new Star Trek film. It was intense. This, not so much:


I'm home in a month. Get ready.