JJ Grey and Mofro: Tampa, Fla. 2/22/08

Friday night, I attended the first part of JJ Grey and Mofro's epic two-day concert at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, Fl. For those who never heard of Mofro, Billboard describes their latest album as

"A glorious, soul-drenched delight...down-home funk, blues and Dixie-fried rock, unmistakably Southern, undeniably soulful"

I'll admit, I caught on to the Mofro bandwagon kinda late. Although I heard about them while I was in Tallahassee, the only album I have is their latest, Country Ghetto. But after hearing that, and having numerous people tell me that their show is not to be missed, I took the chance to see them live.

About the show:

In a word: amazing. Although I didn't know more than half of Mofro's songs (those from their first two albums), the band lived up to expectations. A lot of groove, soul, blues, and southern-rock. Stuff that makes me proud to live in the south. And that's what JJ Grey tries to do: invoke a non-redneck southern pride. Not the Dixie flag-waving Confederate type of pride, but a different, back-to-nature, "oh-why-are-they-building-another-housing-development?"-type of Florida pride. So many of the songs lament of things and times long gone, where grandma's home-cookin' of grits, cornbread, collar greens, and fried chicken made it worth getting up on Sunday. Musically, Mofro incorporates trumpet, sax, slide guitar, blues harp, and piano to a drum beat full of funk. For some reason I thought the saxophone was really impressive. I haven't seen one of those live in a long time.

As mentioned, I only knew about a third of the band's songs. Most of the crowd however, knew all of them, which led to some interesting call and response sing-alongs. Surprisingly, for a blues club the call and response that disappointed me the most was Mofro's cover of Muddy Waters' "Got My Mojo Workin'". At first, most of the crowd didn't know to respond. Fortunately, they got it quick. Or I would have had to slap someone.

About the venue and crowd:

Skipper's Smokehouse is one of those new-age blues venues. Not quite the old juke joint, it's a good place to see live music. Hippie memorabilia, old show posters, and other random miscellanea decorate the walls. As it doubles as a restaurant, there is the whole seafood, beach vibe going on. Nothing wrong with that.

The crowd, however, took some getting used to. Granted, there were some beautiful college-age women there, but accompanying them was some of the most rudest people I've ever been in a crowd with. People who see an inch between two people, and they think they can fit themselves and their girlfriend, her friends, and their boyfriends closer to the stage. At heavy metal shows these are the first people to get pushed into the mosh pit. Trust me, the band doesn't get even better when you are two feet closer.

Oh, one more complaint. To those who smoke out at the show: if you don't bring enough to share, please get high before you show up. Thanks.

(Note: Pic not from Friday night's show. Acquired via Google images.)

This blog does not pay the mafia

"A WHOLE PEOPLE WHO PAYS THE PIZZO IS A PEOPLE WITHOUT DIGNITY"

Now that The Serious Tip is a commercial entity, certain business-like decisions have to be made. Among these are how to cover the extraneous costs that come with being a commercial entity owner. To quote the wisened philosoph, Mr. Thorton Melon,

"First of all you’re going to have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up. Then there's the kickbacks to the carpenters, and if you plan on using any cement in this building I'm sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with ya, and that'll cost ya. Oh and don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there’s long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts."

However, thanks to the confidence and organizational chutzpah of several Sicilian business owners, people are starting to say "no" to the Sopranos, Gottis, and Corleones of the world. To this small band of entrepreneurs, I say bravo, and I am proud to join your league.

By the way, if standing up to the mafia means I can't get rid of my waste here at The Serious Tip, so be it. I'm not backing down. But don't be surprised if this place starts looking like the Collyer House.

Rent an Airfield or Sign a Starting Pitcher?

While surfing the international news, I saw a report that stated the United States spends 17.5 million per year to use Kyrgyzstan's Manas Airbase.

17.5 million.

Or approximately five million per year less than the New York Mets will pay pitcher Johan Santana for the next seven seasons.

So this begs the question, would you rather have an airfield in the middle of Central Asia or an ace pitcher?

Let's first examine the benefits of having an ace pitcher:

Acquiring Johan Santana means acquiring quite possibly the best pitcher in baseball. This of course means more wins, higher attendance, more ticket sales, hopefully a playoff berth, maybe even a championship. Unfortunately, this final result may also cause riots, destruction, mayhem, and general disorder through the metropolitian area.

What about renting an airfield for a year?

Acquiring a Situational Operations AirField (SOAF) - kinda like the LOOGY of military bases - means you can use 37 acres, four watchtowers, 300 tents, a fitness room, a chapel, a post office, a recreation room, and a $5 million, 60-bed military hospital. It's like your own little town. Imagine the party potential if you can convince your friends to visit. And while baseball might not be the national pasttime of Kyrgyzstan, you can probably find it in your heart to root for the local Yak Racing team.

So on one hand you have seasonal fame and the eventual sacrifice of civil order and on the other, the sacrifice of social contact for one year in your own area of self-sustaining blissful solitude, albeit cold, barren, and 25 miles from civilization. But you get to see yaks.

Tough call, if you ask me.

The Serious Tip Dot Com Now Got It Goin' On

Representatives for the Internet drive a hard bargain.

The Serious Tip has acquired the rights to The Serious Tip (dot) com . After hours of deliberation, representatives for The Serious Tip and The Internet agreed to terms allowing the site to be hosted at the following addresses for the infinite future. According to The Serious Tip, the deal took skillful politicking and artful negotiation.

"We were sweating there in the final minutes", said Jordi Scrubbings, writer of The Serious Tip. "I was afraid we weren't going to get the deal done. Once The Internet agreed to pay for our sixth pitcher of beer though, I realized we had it in the bag. Either that, or we got the Internet really drunk."

Lawyers for The Internet also admitted the deal with The Serious Tip was one of its more difficult, although between drunk drivers killing webpages and sharks with laser beams cutting half the world's service, the Internet had other concerns than dealing with an independent blog with global aspirations.

With the transaction finally complete, loyal followers of The Serious Tip are encouraged to change their bookmarks, update their feed readers, and spread the word. The Serious Tip.com now got it goin' on.

YaySports!: Where Blog Abandonment Happens

Few bloggers are more unpredictable than The Cavalier of YaySports!. A self-proclaimed disinterested Cleveland Cavaliers fan, the eccentric genius has in the past year run his site much like Osama Bin Laden - dropping an occasional rambling message while his acolytes (myself included) keep hope alive. He termed his negligence towards his blog "Blog Suicide", and it was supposed to be part of his epic plan prior to releasing "The Mother of All Sports Blog Media", a secret movie known as "Who Shot Mamba?".

As of Thursday morning however, mere hours after I filed my weekly Thursday post on the site, YaySports.com was shut down. After contacting the Cav and expressing my disbelief, I was told that a "redesign" was in progress and that the site could be closed for as long as a week. In light of this revelation, and my disappointment therein, I have decided to re-post my artistic depiction of new teammates and blogger favorites Kwame Brown and Darko Milicic on my own site. It might not be much, but I was proud of it, damnit.

Drunk Sign Language

I just got back from a night gallivanting around town ...

At one bar I visited, there were several deaf people. They had to signal the bartenders in sign language or write down what they wanted. So I got to thinking:

Does deaf people's sign language get sloppy as they drink more? You know how people with normal hearing slur their speech when they are drunk? Does the same apply to the hearing impaired? Do they sign slower? Do they sign the wrong words? What if they get pulled over? Do they sign "Occifer, I swear I only had one beer."? Will the cop know the difference?

These are the things I wonder about.

My Favorite Super Bowl Memory

When MCBias of Moderately Cerebral Bias emailed me asking me to write my favorite Super Bowl memory, I really had to think. What should I write about? The games come and go, usually beer is consumed, food is thrown down the gullet, and commercials are watched. How different can each experience be? I had to really think back - 2007, 2006, 2000, 1994, 1991, 1987 ... all the way to the earliest Super Bowls I could remember watching. After much contemplation, one game - Super Bowl XXXVII (37) between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders - stands out above the rest.

Going to a university like Florida State, a school known more for its athletics than its academics, alumni and students love to namedrop the more famous athletes they had classes with. Some brag about sitting next to Charlie Ward, some talk about Chris Weinke's classroom habits (whatever they may be), so on and so forth.

Personally, I shared class space with a few Seminole football stars. Probably the most famous of these were current NFL players Chris Hope and Darnell Dockett. The athlete I knew the best, however, was an fourth-string linebacker who probably never once saw any action at Doak Campbell Stadium on a game day.

After knowing [name withheld] for only a few weeks, my new football-playing friend invited me to his place for his Super Bowl shindig. Not having any plans outside of the usual beer, buddies, chips and dip, I accepted his invite.

Arriving at [name withheld]'s apartment in late afternoon, I knew I was in for an interesting time. As I pulled into the parking lot, there about a dozen big dudes, all throwing the remnants of barbeque chicken bones across the road I just arrived on. I guess I was lucky they weren't done eating when I drove down the road.

As game time neared, we all hung out in the parking lot of my friend's run-down apartment (football players don't get paid, remember?). Much beer, chicken, and other assorted grilled meat were consumed, and yes, I even competed in a few chicken bone throwing contests.

Not surprisingly, my friend was completely at ease as the master of ceremonies. Apparently, what was risky and exciting to me was par for the course for him. He tossed chicken bones, drank like a champion long before Rothlisberger, bragged about the many women he slept with, and matter of factly yelled insults at two young ladies jogging down the street. I'll admit, a pillar of society he was not, but at least no one threw a chicken bone at the girls.

Of course, no interesting party around Florida State would be complete without a visit from Tallahassee's finest. When the cops eventually showed up, my friend casually told them we would calm down and be a tad less rowdy. Fortunately, the validity of his claim was never tested as the football game started shortly after the police visit.

As the Bucs and Raiders began play, my friend and I and the dozen or so others at the party all huddled into his small, barely furnished apartment to watch the game. Surprisingly, despite being in Florida, there were few, if any, Bucs fans at the party. Those who were there however might have been scared into silence after my friend claimed his admiration for the Raiders' Jerry Rice and placed his 9mm pistol on his coffee table with the declaration of "This is how I'm livin'". Who was I to argue?

During the game, the chaos, as predicted, was toned down, although most likely because the high quantities of alcohol we drank prior to kickoff were starting to sink in. Although I was quite buzzed, I was one of the lucky few not completely trashed and in a few cases, passed out.

As for the game itself, well, any sports fan can tell you former Seminole Brad Johnson led the Buc to victory and fellow former Seminole Dexter Jackson was named MVP. But few outside of the dozen or so people in attendance can tell you that former Seminole [name withheld] threw one hell of a Super Bowl party.


For more Super Bowl stories see MCBias's Moderately Cerebral Bias as he talks about rooting for the Patriots against the Rams and fellow blogger The Extrapolator shares football memories with several generations of Extrapolator kin folk. Also available is Dan from Foxborough's haunting memories of Desmond Howard and the Green Bay Packers and Signal to Noise discusses John Elway's rise to Super Bowl glory.

Take a moment and read some great bloggers and more importantly, enjoy your Super Bowl this year.

Wu-Tang Clan in St. Petersburg, Florida 1/26/08

"Patience or forbearance is basically the Dhamma contrary to anger, which, in other words, is adosa - absence of anger. It is similar to the essence of metta, loving-kindness. In particular, what is said to have patience, is to be able to endure any kind of provocation and to remain calm without anger and doing evil."

"Khanti paramam tapo titikkha"

"Patience is the highest or best devotion"

Patience was definitely the word of the night Saturday night. After the doors of Jannus Landing finally opened at 7:30 (30 minutes after the tickets said doors would open), three hours would pass before the Wu-Tang Clan finally showed up. Three hours of listening to a local St. Pete DJ spinning the same songs I could have listened to in my car. Three hours of some local MCs trying to hype the crowd. Three hours of chanting "Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang". And three hours of standing in the rain, wondering if I wasted my 50 dollars on a band that isn't going to show.

Yes, I was that close to walking out. I was even on my way to find someone in charge to see if I can get a refund when the Wu-Tang bus finally pulled up. Finally.

(Note: This was only my third major hip-hop show as compared to dozens of rock shows. Hip-hop fans are much more patient. Rock fans would be booing, complaining, and probably rioting if their band didn't show. If hip-hop fans get rowdy, they are easily sedated with a old-school Biggie or Nas track. Get their heads nodding and they are good for another hour.)

So at nearly 11pm (10:50 to be exact), the Wu finally took the stage. Most of them. Unfortunately, possibly due to the inner turmoil in the group, the RZA didn't make the tour. In his place on stage were unofficial Wu members Cappadonna and Streetlife. Not bad substitutes, as they have verses on nearly Wu album anyway.

As for the show, when it finally started, it was amazing. As mentioned in other tour reviews, Method Man was the lead MC, hyping the crowd. Apparently the show was the last on the tour, and according to Method Man, they were ready to give 110%. That they did.

Even without RZA, the Wu were on top of their game. Surprisingly, and perhaps related to the fact that RZA was not there, they didn't perform any songs off their new album 8 Diagrams. They did songs off of Enter the 36 Chambers (Shame on a N***a, Bring the Ruckus, CREAM, Method Man, Can It Be All So Simple, Protect Ya Neck), Method Man's Tical (Bring the Pain, What the Bloodclot), Raekwon's Only Built for Cuban Linx (Ice Cream, Incarcerated Scarfaces), the GZA's Liquid Swords album (Duel of the Iron Mic, Liquid Swords), No Said Date from Masta Killa, and a song with Inspecta Deck and Masta Killa (Winter Warz?). Also making a guest appearance was Ol' Dirty Bastard's brother 12 O'Clock to rap Shimmy Shimmy Ya and Brooklyn Zoo.

Needless to say, I was impressed by the Wu-Tang Clan. Although I had seen it in concert footage, Method Man's trick of standing on the hands of fans is very impressive. Their overall energy is amazing and the vibe going back and forth from the group to the fans was electric.

Unfortunately, about an hour into the show, Method Man's mic began to give out. As I was halfway back in the crowd of perhaps 600 to 1,000 people, I could barely hear him. Finally realizing his mic was out, Method Man grabbed Masta Killa's mic, only to find out that was out as well. In turn, nearly every member of the Clan spoke into their mics and then looked at each piece of equipment with disgust. The Wu Tang Clan had been rendered silent by the evil power of St. Petersburg City Ordinance 754-G 11-64.1.b.2.c, which states:

1. Playing, using, operating or permitting to be played, used, or operated any radio, musical instrument, drum, compact disc or tape player, sound amplifier or other machine or device that produces, reproduces or amplifies musical sound within any building if such sound is for the purpose of entertainment or receiving information, or is used for that purpose and: i. In a commercial or an industrial area, Sunday through Thursday, except the day prior to a national holiday, between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. the following morning or on Fridays, Saturdays and the day prior to a national holiday, between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 8:00 a.m. the following morning, the sound exceeds an L50 sound level limit of 60 decibels measured in accordance with Section 11-65 at a receiving land use that is legally used for residential purposes regardless of whether it is situated in a residential area, commercial area or an industrial area.

By 12:07, the mighty Wu-Tang Clan had been completely silenced. Although Method Man attempted some accapella sing-alongs with those in the front rows, the only sound audible was the repeated chant of "Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang" by those who couldn't read Method Man's lips.

Overall, I give my first Wu-Tang Clan experience a Incomplete Minus (I-). Incomplete in that it would have been nice to hear the whole show from start to finish. The Wu definitely had potential and things were starting to get hyped. However, had the group not waited until nearly 11pm to arrive, perhaps they could have fit more songs in before midnight. Any disappointment should be blamed as much on the Wu-Tang Clan as on the ridiculous city ordinances of St. Petersburg, Florida.

My Super Bowl Financial Favorite: Part 2

Three weeks ago, I examined the NFL playoff contenders by their potential effects on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Some had storied pasts of positive financial repercussions, others did not. Some had only one year of success to their name, and others I was left ranking by association.

Alas the field has been narrowed after weeks of contests, drama, and struggle, and we have finally come down to two: the New England Patriots versus the New York Giants. Of course, much will be made of the fact that the Giants are an original NFL team and the Patriots (formerly of Boston) are an original AFL team. As I did three weeks ago, many will discuss the Super Bowl Indicator, and its 80% success rate. But what lies in the numbers? What are the past results of the market following previous championships by these two teams? Should we really root against a historical season by the Patriots for the sake of the market?

In a word, yes.

Since 2002, the Patriots have been bad luck for the market. After New England won Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, the Dow Jones Industrial Average responded by dropping 16.8% from 10,021.71 to 8341.63. The S&P 500 also took a large fall, losing 23.3% from 1148.08 to 879.82.

Following their second championship in XXXVIII, the Patriots disproved the Super Bowl Indicator, and the DJIA increased from 10,452.74 to 10,783.01, a 3.1% gain. Like the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 also increased, climbing 8.3% from 1,111.92 to 1,211.92.

The Patriots most recent win in 2005's XXXIX however, proved the Patriots were not above the Super Bowl Indicator. Following their victory, the DJIA dropped, albeit by .7% from 10,783.75 to 10,717.50. The S&P 500, on the other hand, actually increased, going up 3% from 1,211.92 to 1,248.29.

So since 2002, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has followed Patriots wins with two decreases and one slight increase. The S&P 500 has followed the same Patriot championships with one major decrease, one average increase, and one slight increase.

Then what about the Giants? As I wrote earlier, "As expected from a team hailing from the home of Wall Street, the New York Giant Super Bowl victories precede good years for the Dow." Although their victory in Super Bowl XXI in 1987 brought little to cheer about, the DJIA did increase 2.2% and the S&P 500 climbed a likewise 2%.

The second and most recent Giants' Super Bowl victory, in 1991's Super Bowl XXV, on the other hand, preceded a very good year for Wall Street, with the Dow climbing 17% from 2633.66 to 3168.83 and the S&P 500 also going up by a worthwhile 11.1% clip, from 330.2 to 371.36.

On an added note, if the underdog Giants can pull off the upset and the market responds as it as for their previous victories, the Giants will join only the Redskins and the Packers as the only teams to see positive gains after three Super Bowl wins. And since the market's performance is sketchy at best, horrible at worst following a Patriots' win, the choice of who the market wants you to root for is clear.

Go Giants!


(Picture from: http://cf1.acc-tv.com/)

A toothed vagina. A beaver with bite. A muff with molars.

I've been on the look out for movies that will hold my interest. Last year, I mentioned "Ninja Cheerleaders", a movie that I called the "soon-to-be-greatest movie of 2007". This year I found something even better: "Teeth".

According to the synopsis: "High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group's most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by her bad boy stepbrother Brad's increasingly provocative behavior at home. A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence. As she struggles to comprehend her anatomical uniqueness, Dawn experiences both the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth."

 You read that right. A toothed vagina. A beaver with bite. A muff with molars. In case you can't get enough "Teeth", here is another review, and "Teeth"'s official IMDB page.