Watch Annie Lennox in a Thong in New York City

The Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building. The Big Apple. The land of hopes and dreams. Even if it is home to the undeniably evil Yankees, it's actually a beautiful place.

It begins with a bus ride. Megabus. MEGABUS. Four and a half hours of sitting still in near silence sounds to me like a purgatorial punishment, unless of course, you have your electric guitar and an unquenchable thirst for practicing. Time flies when you are annoying the Asian tourists sitting in front of you by repeating scale patterns for hours on end. I arrive at 10:45 PM. They did not love me long time. I am greeted by a tall, beautiful, stylish blonde wearing coal eye shadow and a brown leather jacket. Her name is Stephanie and she is the reason why I am on this trip. I may explain more about that in another blog, but on with the chlorophyll. She helps me grab some of my luggage and we head to her car where I meet her roomate, Avish, think Asis Ansari meets Robert Downey Jr., and her friend Bryan, equal parts Paul Rudd and Matthew Mcconaughey. We begin what will be one of the most interesting nights of my life.

The first club we go to was called "Nine". A burly, fourty-something man stands guard at the door to what looks like John Wayne Gacey's basement, checks our ID's and we descend into a darkened rectangular dance floor pulsing with rotating club lights decorated with a small bar on the right and a DJ room in the back (which had about as many people as were on the dance floor). I have never been to any bar or club in NY before, so at some point between watching an obese pirate girl doing splits on the floor or the not-sure-of-sexual-preference black guy with a bull ring and a turquoise mohawk grinding himself on one of the stripper poles, scantily clad in a one-piece spandex suit, I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. This is a sharp contrast from the usual Bud Light drinking, football watching bars adorning the Southern Maryland area. It seems inhibitions are something people use as toilet paper here in the big city. Like soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, Avish began sending wave after wave of drinks our way and party time had been initiated.

After an hour or so, we relocated to a place called R-Bar. After Avish schmoozed us past the leather clad, feather wearing "hostess" into the place for half price, no amount of psychological training could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

It went something like this:

A sheek bar, decked out in red and black, looking like something from a scene in the Matrix,

a World War II-based softcore porn playing on all the TV's, middle aged women covered in brightly-colored feather boas, one wearing nothing but star-shaped pasties (she could have used a few weeks of Zumba if she was going to go shirtless...just sayin), an Annie Lennox look-alike contorting herself atop the bar wearing nothing but a thong and a leather strap for a top (I'm pretty sure she actually does Zumba), a man in a beautifully self-made costume who looked like a male Queen Amidala from Star Wars Episode I - his name was King Vulcanus and was the host of this crazy feather-themed bar party.

See!? Male Queen Amidala, right?

....oh yeah, and men walking around in what looked like jewel studded jock straps (and nothing else). At some point in the night, I noticed a homeless man sleeping next to the bar, all wrapped up in blankets. I thought to myself, "oh wow, what a sweet thing to do; to house a homeless man overnight on a cold New York night like this. But holy crap it must be hard to sleep with this window shattering house music blasting all night." As I'm watching this homeless man lay there with a smile on his face, dreaming of who knows what, I witness two women in high heels step on him and begin stomping all over his chest and groin. I immediately go to the bar tender and inform him that evil women are stomping on the sleeping homeless man. He says "It's ok, he wants them to"....Hu...mu....na? Then I noticed, it wasn't blankets he was wrapped up in, it was a carpet, and next to him was a sign that read STAND ON ME. He was a fetishist, and apparently his thing was being walked on. "Well, that's new." So was my first night ever in New York City, the land of the free and the home of the strange. But I honestly think strange is better than inhibited and miserable, so more power to them.

I made sure to hold on to Stephanie's arm very tightly for the rest of the night, but despite the weirdness, it's still a beautiful place.

Go to Six Flags!

Six Flags. More flags = more fun? Not sure of the logic here but lets overlook that. So if I only had one flag I guess I wouldn't be having a good time. I guess the CEO is praying every night at his bed that a place named Seven Flags never opens up, because even if it's a lemonade stand, based on the flag logic alone, it is sure to put Six Flags out of business. But hey, there's no need for logic when you have a mascot this sexy to lure in hot singles from every corner of the state.

Im not sure if any of you have wondered the same thing but wouldn't you have loved to be at the board meeting when 'captain rape' was selected to be the face of six flags? It's like Turtle Wax meets Herbert the Pervert from family guy. I guess who better to lure in little children than a vigorous old pedophile with a colorful van and free tickets to an amusement park.

If you are able to get past the questionable advertising and actually enter the park in person you will come to find you do actually get access to a pretty respectable variety of rides. And it doesn't hurt being accompanied by a very pretty gal (who will later school you in video games....wtf!?). I would highly advise this tactic of opposite sex accompaniment so that you are less likely to check out a hottie from afar only to realize she is a 14 year old......................................boy....or fall into a hypnotic trance from the morbidly obese soul sista pouring out of her size three impromptu booty shorts, the soft undulating blubber demanding your gaze and then disorienting your spacial awareness. Hold on to your pretty girl's (or guy's) arm tightly, maintain eye contact with them at all times and wade through the Picasso painting of a crowd to get to the good stuff. Six Flags people makes People of Walmart look like Victoria's Secret models. And make sure you don't walk to fast either, or they will mistake your hurriedness for fear and once they smell your fear they will bite.

Whats the best thing in the park? Rollercoasters! Yay! Amazingly enough we didn't wait in a single line for more than ten minutes, an all time record, especially since lots A-K were full and we had to park in reserve lot 1, but I'm guessing the heart of the mob was too busy absorbing each other's Hepatitis C in the Waterpark. Wild One is rickety and very likely to derail soon. Do not go on that one. Apocalypse is outstanding (no pun intended, ride it to find out why). Superman reigns supreme. It's like a first person view from Jason Statham's balls in the movie Crank. Pure adrenaline. The downside of roller coasters: when you get done for the day after being strapped in all the harness and seats you will smell like a Persian man's thong after a marathon.

Most of the games are impossible. The ones that are possible cost ten dollars to play and the prize is comparable to a cardboard cut-out of Justin Beiber (clearly not worth ten dollars). Although I must say the squid hats were pretty bawler. I wouldn't mind making an entrance with a neon colored squid on my head.

Before squid hat:

Squid Hat:

After Squid Hat:

Arcade = yes. Almost as good as the roller coasters without even moving. Especially when you have a girl that outscores you in LA Machineguns (a 1st person shooter where you and your partner are on magic Jet-Skis shooting holding infinitely reloading machine guns and shooting at robots that try to kidnap the president...clearly a plot that would make Christopher Nolan soil his pants in awe of such genius.) Air hockey (she beat me), Ski ball, Hoops (she beat me), DDR (she did NOT beat me)....enough said. 20 bucks and the next few hours are pure bliss.

One last thing you should know about Six Flags before you go. Do NOT go into the "Hurricane Simulator". If you would like to experience this, merely go into your bedroom. Turn on your ceiling fan. Put your face close to it. Wait twenty seconds. Turn off of your fan. Take two dollars out of your wallet. Wipe your ass with them and then throw them out of the window. Congratulations you have experienced The Six Flags Hurricane simulator.

I hope this has been informational for you and will one day be printed in color and placed in the Six Flags directory right next the maps and show schedules. A good day to you!

Buy a Honda Fit

Yeah thats right ladies. 109 Horsepower. It runs on corn. 0-60 in 45 seconds flat. Booya. Move over Bugati Veyron, Lamborghini Diablo and Dodge Viper, the Honda Fit is here. And I have one. Jet black. Also there is enough trunk room to fit twenty dead hookers. Thats why they call it the Fit. It Fits your lifestyle, even if you are Charlie Sheen. But in all seriousness for a gigging musician, it's a pretty good deal.

The other day, I raced a quarter mile against couple of guys on street bikes. One of them had a helmet with spikes on it and a video camera. Needless to say, they won, by about a quarter mile. Generally, anyone with spikes on their helmet is going to be pretty fast. Spikes = faster than Honda Fit. Moral of this story. If your goal in purchasing a car is to wrangle up the ladies, please take this warning, this is NOT the car for you. The comments you will receive from friends and onlookers will be something more to the effect of "hey where do you put the tampon", "my suburban shit one of these last week", "is this for your meetings at the YMCA?", and "dude......dude (shakes head with regret)". But Im confident that I will have the last laugh when gas is $45.00 a gallon and my friends with their Ford F-150s and SUV's that burn up half a tank on exiting a parking lot. Long live the Fit!

Watch Limitless

You may have heard of this movie. Bradley Cooper, Di Nero, a cute blonde chick that cuts creepy men with little girls feet? Yeah.

Thats "Limitless". Fantastically adrenaline pumping thriller of a movie. It has a couple loose ends at the credits, but by then I was so pumped I easily forgave the writers....and those hyper-zoom camera shots feel like you're in the thing Jody Foster helped them build in Contact. If you haven't seen this formula 1 car of a movie, it goes like this (don't worry no spoiler). Poor Bradley Cooper is a unproductive writer with an increasingly long streak of writer's block. He is stagnant in every way, unkempt, unmotivated, unable to focus...and his hair looks upsettingly like mine.












See?

Which is why Im getting a haircut very soon. Anyways. He runs into his ex brother-in-law on the street who , over a couple drinks notices how terrible he looks and offers to him a "sample" of a "product" (called NZT) he is "legally" distributing. He even assures him its FDA approved. After a few hours of reluctance but realizing his ever increasing desperation to alleviate his terrible purgatory of a life, Cooper takes the pill and in thirty seconds the haze is lifted. His vision, hearing and every sense is heightened. He becomes aware of every noise, sensation, and piece of information around him. Manically, ee finishes his entire long overdue novel in four days, masters the piano in three, discovers he can inadvertently learn any foreign language by half-heartedly listening to audio tapes while he jogs. He becomes personable, charming, likable, a social prodigy, a marketing whiz, completely fearless in every situation. He becomes a super genius, limited only by the laws of physics.













Side effects of the pill, that would later be revealed to him include; crippling headaches, blackouts (which during the course of you may or may not kill a hooker), noticably bloodshot eyes, and russians trying to kill you. So the question is, side effects............aside..heh..heh...if there were some drug out on the market that would allow you to experience unfettered access to your subconscious, allowing you retain and recall every piece of information you encountered, learn at an exponentially increasing rate would you take it? Im truly curious. Answer below, best response gets a one month supply of NZT!! YAY!!!!

Eat a Ghost Pepper

This blog isn't going to be about music. Oh no. This is something dangerous. Something terrifying and painful. Something that burns with such ferocity even Dante would have trouble describing it. The Bhut Jolokia. We in the U.S. call it "The Ghost Pepper".



For several months now I have been dying to get my hands on one. After seeing countless Youtube videos of people being rendered useless for several hours after only a small bite I knew I had to try it. My grandfather and uncle got me hooked on hot stuff during our annual visits to Bethany Beach where they would douse some wings in an assortment of different incendiary sauces. My first taste of something real hot was "Da Bomb" which tops out at about 50,000 Scoville Units. Scoville units are the units of water it would take to completely dilute the taste of one unit of the heat being measured. So 50,000 S.U. = 50,000 parts water per 1 part hot sauce before the flavor couldn't be detected. Which means really hot.

Jalepenos are about 5,000. A complete joke when compared to the mighty habenero which peaks at about 90,000 - 130,000. Habeneros are still just "really hot stuff 101", however. I have had many habeneros in my lifetime and although they are by no means mild, they are still a manageable pepper for my palette. The ghost pepper, however, is a different story.

It goes like this.

My friends Sean, Brook, Rusty and I meet up at a local Indian place called "Bollywood" which is gaining reputation for its absurdly spicy entrees, many of which the owner wont even allow you to order until you have tried all of the prerequisite dishes which he uses to gauge your ability to handle heat. We are greeted by a distinguished middle aged Indian man with a great sense of humor. I order the "Bollywood Special" (a really hot dish) and some Naan filled with chicken. He says "Get either-or, if you eat the Bolly Special, you will not enjoy anything else." I ask him to make it as hot as possible; the kind of hot where you pass out.

A few minutes later he emerges from the kitchen with a spoon. He says "try". I try. It is a very flavorful, thick curry-like soup with a little heat to it, called "Madras". He carefully watched my face. No grimace or pain. He takes the spoon and disappears back into the kitchen. A few minutes pass and he come out again, with, at first glance, the same thing, but after looking a little harder, this is a much darker red color. I try. He sees a little grimace on my face. This stuff is way hotter. About 2/3 the heat of a habenero. He spices up the dish accordingly and brings it out accompanied by a small sample of what he put into the dish to make it hot. We eat our dinner, and yes it is definitely hot, but I still want something to knock me out.

As we are leaving I ask him if he has anythying special from india to knock me off of my feet. He says "hold on" and goes into the back for a minute. He emerges with a small red pepper. He says "this is called hand-grenade, do not eat inside of here". Awesome.




Sprinting outside with my friends and telling them to get the phones ready for pictures, I pop the whole thing in my mouth, chew as fast as possible and swallow the first half. The grimace on my face grows, as I feel the waves of heat crashing into my mouth , nose and skull, this mother is going to be exactly what I wanted.
My smile soon fades as the waves of heat keep increasing. Soon, it is too much. I literally drop to the ground in pain. My friends, who were laughing, stop, but still continue to record the spectacle. Im laying on sidewalk, families timidly walking by, as I rock back and forth in a pile of mulch, drool cascading out of my mouth and unable to talk. I can hardly see from my eyes tearing up so much. I need to get back to my house where I can recuperate before the gig I have in about an hour. I muster up enough strength to stand and doubled over in pain, slowly walk to seans car. We get in, Rusty wishes me luck has a good laugh and heads home, smiling and shaking his head and Sea and Brooke and I are speeding back to my house. Half of my body is literally hanging out of the car window, drool and snot pouring out of my head. Two state troopers pull up to us at a stop -light, with my head hanging out and facing the ground, very concerned as to what the hell could possibly be wrong with me. I signal for them to roll down the window. They oblige as I explain my dilemma wasn't caused by alcohol, but a ghost pepper. They both start laughing, im guessing they know what they are. One of them goes "I love ghost peppers". Ha, yeah right.

This story will end with me curled up into the fetal position in the back of Seans car, violently puking out of the window like a dragon spewing fire at two lanes of traffic, cars swerving to avoid the fiery puke, horns honking and everyone looking. Not an ounce of embarassment. When you are in pain like that, there is no other feeling. My face was white as a ghost, eyes bloodshot, nose running, stomach in knots. And yes, I will probably do it again.

If someone dares you to do this, Im not going to say don't do it, but consider this blog post, it won't be an enjoyable experience, except maybe those watching. (Unless of course, they have to clean your puke off of their car. Sorry Sean.)

Do a cover song of Jessie J's "Price Tag"

November has already crept in again, but this time I really don't mind. I think the conditioned hatred I used to have of fall has finally left. For it used to mean summer was over, and so were the warm days of non-stop running about the neighborhood, going to the beach, having no homework or cares and enjoying the family vacations to the beach. Soon to come were mornings that started at 6:00 a.m., the never ending stream of worksheets and book reports, the constant struggle to stay awake all day. Don't get me wrong I did have my share of fun at school too, but it paled i comparison with the freedom of summer. But now the school days are long gone and fall now just means when I walk down the street, the trees will look like impressionistic brushstrokes, which I don't really mind at all. I finally have made myself sit down and crank out a cover with a video like I've always planned on doing, so without further delay, here it is. Jessie J's "Price Tag".



Let me know what you think!

Explain my Top 5 favorite Cd's at this moment

So I noticed something on my old college's web site that certain students were spotlighted for their musical achievements and given interviews. I remember one thing I really enjoyed was hearing about the student's top 5 favorite CD's. Since you pretty much have to started playing in the womb and be a total badass to even be considered getting this interview, I was not fortunate enough to get it. So Im doing it myself on my blog. Although I can't really decide on 5 CD's being my all time favorites, I have 5 that I highly recommend and all are completely unique and at some point life changing in my taste and enjoyment of music, so here we go.



5 - Suzanne Vega's "99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees". Somber vocals, really effective songwriting, ambient guitar layers, and industrial laced grooves that are built with an even blend of electronic sounds and and real instruments. These sometimes haunting songs pull influence everywhere from light bossa nova to introspective folk to something reminiscent of the Nine Inch Nails.



4 - Imogen Heap's "Speak for Yourself". This is a production masterpiece to say the least. Absolutely lush, vibrant songs that are as finely crafted and original as a human fingerprint. The highlight of this CD is "Hide and Seek" a jaw dropping tapestry of electronically altered vocal harmonies, like an alien acapella group. This is not to be confused with "Mmmm Whatcha Say?" and in my opinion is infinitely superior to the somehow more popular song that sampled this one.


3 - John Mayer's "Room for Squares". This CD pretty much did it for me. When this came out I must have listened to it five hundred times. Definitely a more heavily produced effort from this never-ceasing-to-amaze writer, but still outstanding, nonetheless. John Mayer has a way of writing a song about things you swore you were the only one going through. From the nostalgia-inducing "1983" to the humorous foot-in-the-mouth anti-hero of "My Stupid Mouth" to the ephemeral happiness by a fire in "St. Patricks Day" this collection of stories is the perfect road trip companion.




2 - Dave Brubeck's "Time Out". Dave took swing and bebop, melted it down like a crazed alchemist and pretty much single-handedly invented cool jazz. This CD was a groundbreaking showcase of experimental jazz forms full of altered time signatures, tempo changing sections and dual tempos. It sounds like a sunday walk through a park of abstract sculptures. This was one of the first CD's I ever really listened to over and over, one of the many great ones in my dads collection.




1 - Thomas Newman's "America Beauty Score". This is it. To me, this is arguably some of the most beautiful music that has ever been created. His anti-orchestra method of creating music yields unique soundscapes that vividly induce certain moods. I once listened to the theme "American Beauty" (I think its track number 6) for more than 5 hours straight on repeat. These tracks are perfect for getting lost in a painting or a good book. You have to hear this one.

Dirty Loops

No this is not a blog entry about what happens if your little brother takes a dump in your box of fruit loops. I want to bring to attention a growing trend. At a seeming increasing rate the pages of Youtube are being filled with an all too similar cover artist prototype. The world absolutely does not need one more cute, 15-25 year old stylishly dressed with an acoustic guitar playing the same 30 or so covers that the entire rest of the world covers. It's beginning to become redundant. Yet you see their videos quite frequently sporting hundreds of thousands of views. Why is this so? Well, you can't deny that almost all of them are talented, at least with regards to singing, and the sound of a well trained human voice is a beautiful thing. But why such the lack of originality? Why does almost every one sound strikingly similar to something you've heard before? Because there is hardly any, if at all, musical interpretation. Just throw a little cute R & B run, maintain eye contact with the camera and POOF, instantly, another star is born. There are too many stars and the sky is so full you can no longer distinguish one from the other.

Yet every now and then someone rises above to completely reinvent a sound and push the envelope of musicality with a seemingly impossible level of skill, talent, taste and chops. That band is called "Dirty Loops". They can take the most trite songs and make them fusion masterpieces. I invite you to enjoy this cover of Britney Spears' "Circus". It's damn good and to me should send every little acoustic guitar holding clone (even myself included) back to the practice room to start making some more original arrangements .




From a person educated in music of many styles, I can say these guys, quite simply put, take dumps on anyone else that covers pop tunes these days (or at least out of the ones I have seen). Hide your cereal boxes.

Rockout at Ruddy

Well. Where do I begin?

What happens when four guys, unrehearsed, who have never played a full show together decide to book a gig at a local place in front of an audience of a couple hundred folks? Well, I would imagine it could very easily be a shit-show of a night that is chock full of microphone feedback, out of time songs, forgotten words and missed chords, possibly some accidental pants-shitting as well. Fortunately, by a miracle, we did not have to skip town after our show and hide from an angry pitchfork wielding mob. We didn't have to sign up for witness protection. We actually had arguably the best night any of us have ever had playing music.

The feeling was just right. There was a hum of energy right from the sound check. Every song just kind of fell together. From Justin's tap dance solos (which immediately turned the heads of anyone who wasn't already listening) to Rusty's Tazmanian devil like hands smashing the cow skin congas until they whimpered to Danny's Ella Fitzgerald-like jazz scat solos dripping with melody, I would say our night was almost a miracle. A couple of us were pretty damn nervous, and thats not a thing that typically happens much when you do this full time. I think we realized about thirty seconds into the first song we were doing really well, everyone was listening, and now is one of those times when you really cant screw up.

Here is a video (Courtesy of the wonderful Laura Isaac) of us rocking out Jill Scotts "Its Love"



If every audience was this great, I think almost everyone would play music for a living.

. From Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" to Jill Scotts "It's Love" to Trains "Meet Virginia" injected with jazz scatting, rock fusion playing, latin vamping, tap dancing, four-trading, stomping, swinging, funktastic-goodness. It was such a fun night and more than anyone we have the crowd to thank. So if you came out, thank you thank you thank you! Luckily we snagged a couple videos out of the night too.



And here is the more well known Sublime hit "Badfish"



To all of you guys who came out and stayed and danced and cheered and sang, you rock! We are really fortunate all of you came out to rock with us, let's do it again soon! Thank you Carlos and Michael for having us all play, we're looking forward to next time!

Dylan

"The Young Professionals" New Video

Hey, so I mentioned in the last post I am a part of a duo called "The Young Professionals". We have a little bit of funk influence, a little pop, a little R & B and a little Reggae. We will be working almost around the clock to build up a solid repertoire with enough variety for any crowd. We are really looking forward to getting a following in Annapolis and playing for my hometown friends to Here is one of our many covers.

So here is a little sample of us doing a Maroon 5 cover:



Feel free to leave a comment below, let me know what you think of the cover and also let me know what covers you would want to hear us play! We do have a lot more videos to make before we start taking requests but, if there are enough suggestions for a certain song, we will add it to the repertoire.