Category Archives: Daaaaaamn!

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The World’s First World Wide Web World Tour with The Hives

Daaaaaamn!, Music
1-23-2021

I think this picture I took says it all about The Hives.

A few months ago the band announced they would be steaming 6 shows in January, each one for a different city around the world. You could buy a ticket for every show if you wanted to, they wisely didn’t geolock them (they played from their home, Sweden).

Fans got to vote for a few songs to be played, they had a hotline to all into and overall it was really great. Even in a warehouse with a few crew members they put on a Hives worthy show through the internet. It was surprisingly fun! The picture broke up a few times with some bad artifacting but the audio was fine for the entire show. It was shot with one camera which was actually a great idea as it made it feel really intimate. The camera operator was basically moving around and through the band the whole time so it felt like I was there and Pelle was talking directly to me.

The only problem was-as always for The Hives-the show was too short! About an hour of sweat and swag. With so many great songs they could go forever but hey, a great way to spend $15 bucks. Solid set list and they played 2 rare/new/unreleased songs, Stick Up and Paint A Picture. Stick Up has been around for a while and is my favorite. Nick Arson’s guitar tone is killer, the riffs are dirty and it’s got the mind tickling moments of the trademark Hives bounce. It’s also like 2:30 long so it flies at you like a smack to the face.

More bands should do this.

The End of an Era

Daaaaaamn!, NY Rangers

Henrik Lundqvist time with the New York Rangers is over. Since 2005 he has been the landmark of the team, playing in New York for his entire professional career. He holds almost every goalie record for the team and his career stats in the league are all near the top. This is been a possibility for a year now and it’s a sad day. He is a legend.

The last year of his contract has been bought out so he now a free agent. He can be signed by any team that needs him or he could retire. It’s impossible to say what will happen. He does still want to play and there will be a lot of goalies on the market this off season (I think it’s like 8 with Hank included) so it’s all up in the air. It’ll be really weird to see him on another team.

Ideally, he’d end his career by retiring with the Rangers, with the final trophy for his collection, the Stanley Cup. So this feels like a let down. The front office has decided that he isn’t worth his salary any longer (one of the highest paid goalies in the league) and Shesterkin and Georgiev can guard the net together. Shesterkin is the future, Georgiev is getting better and better and you can’t have Hank be a backup while paying him starter money. The COVID shutdown put the squeeze on the salary cap so there’s little choice. It makes sense but it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Lundqvist has more highlights than you can shake a hockey stick at. His number will absolutely be retired at Madison Square Garden. With this whole mess he’s not going to get the proper public send off he deserves and that’s gross. I don’t think the organization will let that stand though. I think when he does decided to retire from the NHL and we can pack stadiums again, they’ll throw the ceremony The King rightfully deserves.

Game Over Man! Game Over!

Daaaaaamn!, You know what grinds my gears?

Last night the Rangers lost to the Lighting in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals 2-0. A shut out after delivering a 7-3 beating in game 6. Such an unjust end, I’m still annoyed almost 24 hours later. I can’t even bring myself to look up a picture as a header for this post.

The better team did win. This series made no sense at all as it oscillated back and forth every single game. Close calls and blow outs every other game. Game 7 turned out to be game 5 almost exactly, which is just infuriating. Nothing worked for the Rangers (I think injuries and exhaustion finally caught up with them like in 2012), it was so hard to watch. Tampa locked down their defense, the Rangers too slow on the uptake and when a mistake happened, Tampa was all over it. Rangers struggled with Power Plays all season and it’s partially what did them in. Zooks getting hurt 2 months ago along with Nash and MStL going cold in the playoffs really cut off options. I thought for sure they’d get at least back to back Conference wins heading into the playoffs.

It’s a big chunk of disappointment after an amazing run. Best season in franchise history, and three rounds of exciting playoffs.  Looking back at it, I’ve watched just about every Ranger game in the last 6 months with the real chance of winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 21 years. Now part of the disappointment is not having a game to look forward to watching. Tampa will play either the Ducks or Blackhawks (that will be decided tonight, Blackhawks rallying to push a game 7) but without a pony in the race I find it hard to care much.

I’d like to see the hockey season be cut by about 2 weeks or so. The Cup should be awarded in the middle of May, it’s just too much of an endurance race with 82 regular season games. Not to mention hockey in the summer is weird. Everyone is beat to hell and exhausted, championships shouldn’t be decided on players being held together with athletic tape and running on fumes.

Now all that’s left on is baseball. I’m not into watching grass grow so I’ll just hang up my jersey and bullhorn until the 2015-2016 NHL season in October. We’ll get ’em next year.

Rollercoasters 2015

Daaaaaamn!, Life

Now that we’re well into spring, it’s time for all the cold weather amusement parks to open for buisness along side their warm weather competition. New season means new attractions and here are some of the biggest rollercoasters in America for 2015!

Thunderbird *Now Open* at Holiday World

Tempesto *Now Open* Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Wicked Cyclone *Opening Soon* Six Flags New England

Fury 325 *Now Open* Carowinds

Twisted Colossus *Opening Soon* Six Flags Magic Mountain

 

 

Patrice O’Neil

Daaaaaamn!, Life

Patrice O'neal

On November 29th, Patrice O’neal passed away from complications of a stroke he suffered in late October. I heard of him from Opie and Anthony since his first appearance, which was something like 10 years ago. He was one of my favorite stand up comics and just an incredible personality. Anything he talked about was fascinating and hilarious, it’s a tremendous loss that he’s gone at the age of 41. He had so much left in him to say and his life being cut so short really sucks. This is the first comic passing that’s really bummed me out, I always looked forward to hearing him on the radio show where he was completely free to be himself. He was in almost every time Jim Norton was out on other business, he was just an amazing talent that can’t be replaced.

His last special, Elephant in the Room is easily his best. The Roast of Charlie Sheen in September finally put the spotlight on him after so much (stubborn) hard work. Tragic end to a brilliant person. Condolences to all the friends that knew him best and the loves of his life, his family.

UPENN Stupidity

Daaaaaamn!, Life, News, Weird Stuff, You know what grinds my gears?

This story has absolutely blown up this week and is just hard to believe grown men in a position of power and leadership could be so fucking stupid.

Now all the facts aren’t out, the path of what happened in the passed 15 years (!) on this alleged creep, Jerry Sandusky, aren’t entirely known. It’s safe to say that the complete story is going to come out in the next few months and is going to be much worse and even more mindboggling.

This has nothing to do with football.

Without rambling on too much (there is a ton to this) and to get to my real point, how did this not stop at Mike Mcqueary’s shower sodomy discovery? There’s a hierarchy at that school and mental path that I can’t wrap my head around. From what I’ve read, Sandusky had the heat turned on him for some similar shady allegations in the late 90’s that ended up fizzling out with the authorities. It was about a year later that he retired. 3 years later is when Mcqueary caught him violating the boy. Mcqueary then calls his dad and LEAVES? He does nothing to help the kid? The next day he tells head coach JoePa (and I’m not sure what kind of detail he went into with Joe). Joe goes up a level in the school administration, which ends up going to the president of UPenn. At no time were the cops called. The “punishment” for Sandusky was that he could not bring kids on campus anymore. What? This monster was skipping around campus as of last week! Somewhere in that chain of events and executive decision some things really went wrong.

I absolutely agree that the men who did nothing to stomp this monster out of the public and into a jail cell should be shown the door. For some reason it looks like the media is focusing mostly on JoePa, which I don’t agree with. Let’s point the brunt of the burners on Sandusky (how the hell did this guy get BAIL? He’s not a risk to the public?!) Mcqueary is a dumb son of a bitch as far as I can tell. UPenn is suppossed to have the utmost pride and ethic code around, it’s insane this happened.

Why did Mcqueary think that his bosses were the authority on a heinous crime? Was he afraid of losing his job for outing a pedophile? At the very least couldn’t he have made an annomous 911 (or campus security) call to get the cops to come and investigate? How did he do NOTHING to help the boy? This just just makes him an accomplice along with the rest of the administration that was told and did nothing.

I don’t understand what the end game of their thinking was. How could not going to the cops and getting Sandusky locked up be bad? They thought this would never come out and be a million times worse? This is Freddy Krueger territory! There are 8 known victims as of now, possibly reaching into other states! They could easily have just oust Sandusky and say they had no clue what he was hiding for all these years. THAT is how you protect your industry, school, reputation, faculty, staff and students. We found out and acted immediately to one of the biggest crimes in society. He doesn’t represent the school, we cooperate with the cops to get all this under control etc. It becomes a story of one heinous individual who got caught and stopped by sane human beings and not a napalm bomb years later. Each on of the men with their heads on the chopping block would a)not be arrested and/or b) fired! JoePa could coach for as long as his heart desired and not have his legacy ruined in a trainwreck of national and world news coverage. Sandusky went on to hurt more kids!

What happened?