Art O’Connor

Big time bike racing hits Utah in a big way.  Man it was killing me to watch I wanted to be out there so bad, oh well maybe next year.  I have to say that this race was incredible on every level.  First to Jason Preston, dude you have really put together something special.  You have given the entire state something to be proud of.  The local media coerage was great especially the radio.  Hopefully everyone got to hear T-Mac with Bob Roll today.  If I were Bob I would be worried about my gig in July about now.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  No one works a crowd like Gardie Jackson.  He brings so much energy and enthusiasm to everything he does it is really amazing.  The atmoshpere and excitement he generated last night at the Downtown race was fantastic.  I overheard a couple talking say how cool it was that they hired a professional announcer for the race. Sweet.  Jeff and Burke, Wow.  It was so cool to see these guys really showcase how talented they are in front of a home crowd.  I know how hard these guys work to do what they do.  With all the scandals at that other Tour it is really inspiring to see what can be accomplished by a clean athlete that is willing to work hard and not cut corners.  It also showed that when any of us mortals are with these guys in a break with them at the local races it is because they are letting us.  I don’t think there are any illusions left as to how fast these guys can go when they need to.  Really all the Utah riders rode their asses off, it was fun watching you guys. 

Next time one of the lazy spoiled Jazz millionaires show up to camp fat and out of shape, Larry Miller should make them go on a few training rides in January with Jeff and Burke to get a lesson on how real athletes who love their sport prepare for the season.

As soon as I can find my USB cable I will put some pictures up.

So for the last few weeks I have found myself in front  of a TV on Wed nights (it all started in god forsaken Texas) and have been sucked in to “Rock Star: Supernova“.  This is the second season, last year they found a new singer for INXS (so they could join Styx on that lucrative state fair circuit).  This season they are trying to find a singer for Tommy Lee’s new “Super Group”.  The line up is T. Lee, former Metallica whipping boy Jason Newsted, and professional hired gun Gilby Clarke (I think this may be the first band he has ever been an original member of).  The premise of the show is the get a bunch of wanna be rock stars to compete to be the new singer.  Each week all the wanna be’s sing a song and the TV audience votes and narrows it down to the bottom three.  Those three then sing again and the band makes the final cut and sends someone packing.  Oh yeah for some reason allegedly straight Dave Navarro is a judge as well with plastic surgery catalog Brooke Burke as the host.
 
If I were putting together a band the last thing (and least Rock and Roll) I would do is let the mouth breathing public  pick who even gets to be a roadie let alone my singer.  These are the same people who buy millions of Nickelback records, the same people who think Wil Ferrel is funny, the same people who elected George Bush.  Oh well at least in this election your vote is counted.  Then again this is really just demographically accurate “rock” for people who have only a passing interest in music and a major interest in shopping.  Some of the singers are actually very good, my favorite is Patrice.  She has a great voice, stage presence, and pick great songs.  Unfortunately that will probably be her down fall. Last week she did an awesome take on a  Jeff Buckley song which I am sure left about 99% of the home viewers at home going “Huh?”.  Not surprisingly she was in the bottom three.  I really don’t know where I am going with this I just felt like I needed to write something.

In other news Wendy Chao has just received the first shipment of Chairman Meow shirts.  Order now as supplies are limited. 

Last night Henry Rollins came to town with his friends from X.  I never got to see Black Flag. I have seen Henry on a spoken word tour which was cool, intense but not what I imagined his concerts to be like.  He has always had something to say that I wanted to hear.  “The End of Silence” is probably the greatest record ever made for getting over being rejected or dumped.(I have listened to it a lot). Henry knows the pain. So yeah I am a huge fan, which makes what I have to say next that much harder.  The show was kind of lame.  Yeah Henry was super intense, stompin, spitting, screaming like a mad man.  No he was not phoning this one in.  Still there was something missing.  Was it the plain white light of the stage that never changed?  Maybe.  The middle age(me included) crowd trying to imagine themselves at the Speedway in 1989?  The $30 tickets, $5 dollar Bud Light, $2 6 oz bottles of water?  I don’t know.  I was thinking it was just me until AB in true AB fashion broke it down and said “Man did that suck or what?”  I don’t know if I would say that it sucked but it was just not what I was expecting.  Maybe I have just gotten spoiled coming off the high that was Lamb of God and Slayer.  I am glad I went, Henry is still the man in my book. He probably just caught me on an off night.

Oh yeah X sounded great.  Check out the pics.

Every once in a while I will watch the local news if only to remind myself why I don’t watch the local news.  Last night in between the usual “Your lawn could KILL you”  and  “We found someone from Utah who was at (latest world disaster)” they had a story “Talking to your kids about Lance Bass”.  I had no idea who Lance Bass was so I kept watching.  He is a member of the boy band “Lip Sync” and has come out and said he is gay.  Unreal!  Who thought any of these guys were straight in the first place?  Next thing you know they are going to tell me the President is just a figure head put in place by a group of savy investors to distract the country while they rob us blind.  I gotta start paying attention.

Today I got my 10,000th hit.  Well not really, I had a stat counter on the old site and it hit 10K right before i changed formats.  This stat counter has been running since June 27 so that means over 20k hits (yep just did that math in my head). That to me is amazing.  I know it is not a huge number, Swill gets something like 60K a day at his site.  Then again he has something that my site lacks, interesting content.  One of the things my stat counter tracks is the search strings that lead people to my site.  Some of the more interesting ones are: “Art sucks”, “DJ’s are lame”, “Morbid Tales”, and my favorite “Clown Midget pics”.  Man, there are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands.  So there you have it, two milestones for me in August.  10,000 hits and I turn 40. BFD, both have their merits as well as their sad pathetic components.