Good T.V.

Aside from my motorcycle trip on this holiday weekend, I've become hooked on a couple of shows. The first one will be obvious to anyone familiar with my musical tastes. I'm enthralled by Supergroup on VH1. Right now after 2 episodes it's made me laugh out loud more than any sitcom in the last few years has. If you haven't seen it, it's five of yesterday's (or yesteryear's) rockstars living in a house for 12 days. At the end of the 12 days they have to perform a concert with original songs. The members are Ted Nugent, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Jason Bonham, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row fame (or infamy) and Evan Seinfeld from Biohazard. It's just slightly less contrived than a sitcom and probably as scripted as any "reality show" but that doesn't take away from the hilarity. Since I don't like reality shows anyway I take it for what it is. As an example it seems that Scott Ian has a slight man crush on the Motorcity Madman. In one scene Scott and Ted jam together while the gentle strains of Queen's song You're My Best Friend plays in the background. Classic. I'm a little disappointed that with all the ego's vying for attention Ted Nugent isn't sticking out. Next to Sebastian Bach and Evan Seinfeld, Ted's just your funny eccentric Uncle.

My other current favorite is on the opposite end of the spectrum, The Dog Whisperer. I think I'm coming a little late to the party but that's okay. This show is like one of my old favorites, The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. Like that show there's nothing to it, it seems to be the same thing every episode and I can't stop watching. Like Bob Ross, Cesar Millan is a living breathing quaalude to me. It amazes me that with just his calm demeanor and a gentle boot to the ass he turns a raving mad Chihuahua into his docile bitch. My favorite episode had to be the one with the squirrel killer terrier, in about ten minutes Cesar, the dog, a guinea pig and a rabbit are laying together on the lawn. Now that's good t.v.

I'm sure that, my attention span being what it is, I'll loose interest in these two shows in a few weeks. I don't watch much television to begin with. If they want to hold my interest maybe some programming genius should combine Supergroup and Dog Whisperer. I'd like to see Cesar Millan go head to head with Ted Nugent.

Gettysburg

Gettysburg
Originally uploaded by Darin Clisby.

This diorama covers ten 8x10 ft table tops!

The history of the project is found here...Gettysburg

Wayfaring.com

My brother, in a never ending quest to figure out where the hell I'm at, turned me on to Wayfaring.com. I haven't explored it's features too much but I decided to create a map that tracks the last year or so of projects I've been on. So here it is:



It's definitely a work in progress. I want to add the dates I was at a spot, and would like to go back and put all the places I've been since starting this career but that's a pretty tall order.

Thanks Bryce.

All You Need To Know

The MOST useful film on the web.

Happy Anniversary

It's hard to believe but it's been a year for this blog. A lot has happened in that time, the biggest and best thing being the engagement to Lisa. We're in the middle of planning the wedding and I'm getting excited. I'm getting excited to have the wedding over and get on to the marriage. That'll be the fun part I believe. We started off the year great. Lisa came up to Alaska to meet me and that was actually the subject (kind of) of my first post. We went to New York City, California and everywhere between. It was a lot of fun. We've been apart for the second half of the year and it's not been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to when she comes back on the road with me.

I'm surprised to still be posting here, I've been close to stopping more than once. It's usually out of frustration. I didn't care for the way the blog was going but I decided to write it for myself and if people read it great, if not that was okay too. Like my Flikr page I started getting wrapped up in site hits and views. I'm glad to say I got over that quick. It's a lot more enjoyable for me to be posting for me, but if anyone needs a picture of Joe Walsh don't hesitate to ask. Instead of ending this blog, I've actually started another one for my motorcycle rides, Riding.

I used to try an old fashioned journal back before the internet and just couldn't keep it going. This has been easier, it makes me wish blogs had been around back "in the day". I'm looking forward to the second year of Life's Been Good. I'm going to make a prediction about the coming year, it's going to be as good as the last.

The Grace of Graceland

Lisa came to town this past weekend and we had a chance to go to Memphis and Graceland. She's wanted to go for awhile and I've always had a certain interest in it too. My relationship with the King has been a mixed bag. When I was young I knew of him like I knew of Frank Sinatra. He was someone all the adults were talking about. He took four years off from recording in the mid-sixties which is about the time I was becoming aware of life outside my back yard. I think this always seemed to make him feel like a geezer to me. I remember In The Ghetto as a kind of comeback hit. I never really got a proper perspective on his enormity. I remember having a weird response on the day I found out he had died. Even though he wasn't from my era he was the last great icon of America. There were a few (like Frank) before but I don't believe there were any after. Like most musical trends he belonged to my parents so he was uncool, but there was no denying he touched me in ways I didn't even know. As I've gotten older I've lightened up on my opinion of him. It still sways between classic cheese and appreciation for a white boy that made it safe for the kids to love the "dangerous" black R&B that was there but ignored. Plus there were some great songs.

I wasn't sure what to expect at Graceland. From everything I had heard it was small and tacky. I was preparing for big pink haired women with turtle shell glasses and guys in wife beaters with scraggly beards. I really am a sucker for a good cliché. What Lisa and I found was that and more. There were those people, there were young guys in front of us from Germany, there were families and everything between those three groups. It's definitely a commercialized atmoshpere but no worse than other similarly themed museums.

The house is surprisingly small with a touch of tackiness, but if memory serves what place wasn't a little tacky in the seventies. One of the things that caught me by surprise was the ordinariness of it. Most of the furniture could have been in my family's home. It might have been expensive but it didn't seem like the stuff of a legendary recording artist. My biggest problem with it all was the crowded tour. There was probably about twenty people in our group and it was like pushing through the biggest house I myself have ever been in. I mean that's how modest this place is. It really didn't seem much bigger than my cousin's old split level. The grounds were decent but just 13 acres.

Lisa and I both agreed it was well worth the trip, there was all manner of interesting paraphernalia. His gold and platinum records alone were stunning. It was both what I had heard it was and more. I didn't find it tacky or corny but an interesting glimpse into a history that I was too young to pay attention to at the time. It was like a piece of my history too.

The Lorraine Hotel

Lisa came to visit this past weekend. We had a great time and squeezed a ton of stuff into five days. I'll try to get to all of the stuff over time, just so I'll remember everything we did. We went to Memphis to check out Graceland but ended up seeing a landmark more powerful and one that for some reason I hadn't expected. Lee and I were walking around the Beale Street area downtown and a few blocks up we saw a sign for the National Civil Rights Museum. As we walked down the hill in the direction the sign indicated we approached a hotel. It was slow to register but the pieces started to fall into place. I began to realize that I was looking at the hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated. I can't explain why but coming to me the way it did seemed very appropriate, it came to me in a surreal chain of awareness. The museum is on a preserved city block and the hotel looks just like the famous picture just from a different angle. It was an overwhelming feeling to be standing on the spot where someone I've always admired was slain for standing up for what he believed. It was sad and powerful and it stuck with me the rest of the weekend and still does.