Between moving to Missoula, getting my law school ducks in a row, and, of course, gigging, I haven’t been able to crank out tour blogs as quickly as I’d like.  But never fear, for three tour blogs–Missoula, Rockin’ the Rivers, and our Y.V.B.C. show–will be posted very soon, hopefully by the end of the weekend.  They were three great shows and I’m very eager for you to all to read about then.

So please bare with me over the next couple of days and I promise the blogs will be worth the wait.

Thank you for taking part in the voting and thanks to all of the entries.

TOP ENTRIES:

[nggallery id=13]

OFFICIAL CONTEST PHOTO ALBUM: *VIEW*
TOTAL VOTES: 769
TOTAL ENTRIES: 34
AVG VOTES PER ENTRY:23
MOST VOTES: 136
LEAST VOTES: 1

WINNER!
RYAN ANDRIST: “I Just Can’t Quit You” 136  votes *VIEW*

[singlepic id=158 w=320 h=240 float=]

OUTRAGEOUS AWARD:
DERWIN: “Clintons Tattoo” 73  votes *VIEW*

ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION & CREATIVE SET-UP AWARD:
STEVE GOFF: “Free Ride In A Cop Car”  56  votes *VIEW*
JIM MATULEVICH: “Senior Kegger” 49 votes *VIEW*

VOTER’S FAVE AWARD:
JAYME GREEN: “Pair of Clintons Fans” 63   votes *VIEW*

TAMMY QUITRELL: “Nipples” 60 votes *VIEW*

SEXXXY AWARD:
JONNA DENSON: “Two Chicks Makin’ Out and a Dude Motorboating”  23  votes *VIEW*

Thanks to all other entries!  You all did a great job;)

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m still recovering from a trifecta of bad ass shows.  Thursday night was Music on Main in Bozeman, Friday was the Bert and Ernie’s birthday bash in Helena, and Saturday night was America Day in Liberty Lake, Washington.  It was one of the funnest, most energetic weekends we’ve had in a very long time.  Stay tuned over the next few days for detailed reports of those shows, complete with setlists, highlights, and other riff-raff.

America!

F**k yeah!

Never mind the picture.

Our pal Peter Rosten will be interviewing John and Levi on his much revered Anti-Crap radio show at 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon.  If you’re in the Missoula/Lolo area, you can listen to them on 930 AM.  The show can otherwise be accessed at http://www.missoulasprogressivetalk.com via Internet feed.  I urge all of you to give them a listen and, if you feel compelled to do so, give them a call at (406) 728-0093 or 1-800-568-5309.  They’d love to hear from you.

We have a long weekend ahead of us, kids.  Be ready for some tour bloggage.

Never has The Onion pissed me off so much.  I’m not going to be able to get this damn song out of my head for days.

Oh, Trent Reznor.  You never cease to amaze me.

Ever since seeing Nine Inch Nails in concert not once, but twice, I’ve had a love affair with the genius that is Trent Reznor.  The man is brilliant, and that’s something music lovers–not just Nine Inch Nails fans, but music lovers in general–would know and appreciate if they listened to any of NIN’s music.  Since 2005, NIN have released not one, not two, but four albums, each one unique and completely different from its predecessor.  Out of the four albums they’ve put out since 2005, being 2005′s With Teeth, 2007′s Year Zero, and 2008′s Ghosts I-IV and The Slip, which they offered on their website for free, my favorite would have to be the hard-hitting, apocalyptic themed Year Zero.  It’s just super bad ass.  If you haven’t checked out any of these records, make sure you do so.  And remember that everything was 100 times better live.  Not to rub it in or anything, but it’s true.

Now, Reznor is pushing the envelope even further (believe it or not!) with yet another brand-new album, this time with the man who’s known as the Jesus of production (to me), Timberland  Timbaland.  You know, he’s the guy who ruined One Republic’s hit “Apologize” by adding little “Ay, ay, ay”‘s to the mix. The new album, Strobe Light, follows the lead of former Soundgarden/Audioslave/credible frontman Chris Cornell, who decided to express himself as an artist by means of shitty faux rock/hip-hop instead of by, say, reuniting with his old band.  It’s likely to be the most expressive thing Reznor has ever done.  EVER.

Here’s the track listing, complete with credited all-star collaborators.

1. Intro Skit
2. Everybody’s Doing It (featuring Chris Martin, Jay-Z AND Bono)
3. Black T-Shirt
4. Pussygrinder (featuring Sheryl Crow) (apparently guaranteed to be the feel-good jam of the summer)
5. Coffin on the Dancefloor
6. This Rhythm is Infected
7. Slide to the Dark Side
8. Even Closer (featuring Justin Timberlake and Maynard James Keenan)
9. On the List (She’s Not)
10. Clap Trap Crack Slap
11. Laid, Paid and Played (featuring Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas and Al Jourgensen)
12. Feel Like Being Dead Again
13. Still Hurts (featuring Alicia Keys)
14. Outro Skit

You can bet your ass I’ll pay $18.98 for the download plus the additional $10 digital delivery convenience fee!  I love artistic expression, no matter how random, unnecessary, and, last but not least, shitty!

*Note: This is bullshit.

Knowing what we know now makes this an insanely creepy picture, doesn’t it?

But I can’t say I blame the poor guy.  Carrie Fisher was hot back in the day.

In other news, it’s just been announced that 300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder is going to remake George Lucas’ beloved Star Wars trilogy, known as A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, respectively.

Here’s what the bearded one had to say about the project:

“To be honest, Zack wasn’t always my first choice,” Lucas told a crowd of skeptical journalists and fans. “But I feel he can really 300 up the project.”

“Quite frankly, and I know a lot of people won’t want to hear this, but I find the episodes 4-6 to be somewhat boring when compared to episodes 1-3. I just have never felt totally satisfied with this franchise and I think the fans know that.”

Sign me up!

Oh, and Happy April Fools Day!

We’re doing a pool at work for the NCAA tournament, not to be confused with the NIT tournament.  It’s my first time participating in an office pool, and judging by the overall shittiness of my bracket and my current score, it may be my last.  Some people in the office just chose the higher seed to win every game.  And you know what?  They’re sitting at fourth and fifth place, respectively.  To be fair, one of them is actually one of the attorney’s daughter,  who is barely over a year old.  I tried stirring up the pot a little bit, doing my best to predict upsets and maybe call out this year’s George Mason before anyone else did.  I’m now at second to last place out of 36 different brackets.  Sheeyit.

I suppose that’s what you get when you have Stephen F. Austin (the university, not the person) upsetting Syracuse in the first round and making it to the Sweet 16 and choose Akron to beat the often unreliable Gonzaga Bulldogs in the first round, only to see the Zags actually defy expectations and play in the tournament like they have a pair.  All of my Final Four selections are still in the running, though.  At least I have that going for me.

Holy mother of frak, it’s over.  It’s really over.  No more staying in Friday nights, eager anticipation for season and mid-season premieres, plot speculation, Cylon speculation, mind-blowingly frustrating season finales, sincere human drama with believeable characters…

…you know what? I could go on and on about what everything that ends with the finale of Battlestar Galactica, but the fact of the matter is that my favorite show–one that I have watched from the beginning–is over.  The only consolation is that when it ended, it ended perfectly, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

There are so many highlights from the finale that I don’t know where to begin.  Since the miniseries, some of the things that have made BSG such an amazing show is the ingenious and unpredictable plot and premise, the dynamic characters, the amazing space battles and action sequences, and the movie-quality special effects.  The finale was great because it gave us everything that made us fall in love with the show in the first place.  It was as action-packed as the heart stopping “Exodus Pt. 2″ from season 3, dramatic as episodes like “Lay Down Your Burdens” from season 2, and surprising as basically every twist and turn we’ve seen in the show’s tenure, especially the season and mid-season finales.  They took the best parts from all the past episodes and made it into one epic masterpiece, easily deserving of the name Battlestar Galactica.

Going into Friday night’s BSG-a-thon, my expectations were tremendously high.  I took to mind some of the other T.V. series that have aired their season finales in the past few years, namely The Sopranos and The Shield.  Knowing the dark tone of BSG, I was expecting a somewhat bittersweet ending where important characters die heroically, all but eliminating the possibility of some kind of half-baked spinoff movie or T.V. show.  

SPOILERS–LOOK AWAY IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FINALES OF THE SHIELD, THE SOPRANOS, or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Take The Sopranos, for example.  In the series’ final episodes, New York mob boss puts out hits on Tony Soprano, his brother-in-law Bobby, and his number two man, Sil, played by Steven Van Zandt.  Bobby and Sil both get riddled with bullets, while Tony’s fate is a little more ambigous.  At first, fans across the country were livid by the ambiguous and infamous cut-to-black ending.  But as time went on, the ending made more and more sense.  I think it ended perfectly.  The irregular amount of focus placed on the man wearing the Members Only Jacket sitting at the counter, who is in turn paying a bit too much attention to Tony and his family, all but spells he causes the cut-to-black ending.  Watch it on YouTube.  You see him get up from his seat, avoid eye contact with Tony, walk into the bathroom (perhaps as an homage to The Godfather), then BAM.  Nothing.  When you get a mortal gunshot would do the head, the bullet is so fast that it reaches your brain before the sound does.  So if you get shot in the back of the head, you’re just going to die.  You won’t even hear it coming.  The show ends when Tony does.  Without Tony, there isn’t a show.

Then there’s The Shield.  Whereas The Sopranos initially left scores of fans across the country incredibly frustrated and distraught, The Shield gave their fans a clearly unambiguous and satisfying ending that kept them talking for months.  The main story arc in the final season was a mounting conflict between corrupt cop Detective Vic Mackey and Detective Shane Vandrell–a cop who spent his career following Mackey’s game plan, paying dearly for it in the end.  In its seven-year run, viewers watched Mackey and his gang, the Strike Team, lie, cheat, steal, torture, and bribe their way out of any situation, without any of them, save for fellow Strike Team member Curtis Lemansky, paying for their crimes.  That is, until the final episode.  The conflict spirals out of control, and Vandrell, in an effort to save himself and his family from a life of hell in prison, takes his own life as well as the lives of his 2-year-old son, wife, and unborn child.  

To cleanse himself of his past sins, Mackey agrees to come clean with all of his transgressions in the form of a plea bargain to the Feds.  In return, the Feds give him immunity and a job where his expertise can be utilized.  This is done, of course, without them knowing exactly what his past sins are, giving them a very rude awakening once he spills his guts to the federal agent.  But since an agreement was made, nothing can be done.  He’s essentially a free man with a clean slate.  Technically speaking, anyway.  His punishment is that he’s taken off the streets as a cop and forced to work an 8-5 office job, ostracized by his former peers who see him as he really is.  I thought that the ending was truly Shakesperean.

I was expecting a similar ending with BSG.  You know, the crew of the Galactica sacrificing itself for the sake of Hera, Helo, and Athena, making it a fairly bittersweet ending.  When that didn’t happen, i.e., when they landed on Earth (our Earth) and showed signs of a happy ending, I was initially disappointed.  I mean, the show was so dark from the beginning that it only made sense to me that it’d have a dark, tear-jerking ending.  But the more I thought about how they ended things, the more I liked it.  We’ve come to know and love the characters from BSG over the past five years, and they’ve been, more often than not, clear-cut protagonists.  They didn’t deserve the same fate as Tony Soprano and Vic Mackey.  Whereas those two characters spent their lives cheating, stealing, and shitting on everyone but themselves in order for their own personal gain, the characters from BSG were the ones getting shit on.  They deserved at least some kind of reward or happy ending after their years of running across the galaxy from their enemies, and by George, they got it.  Again, I’ll reiterate that it was the perfect ending for one of the best shows ever made.

And the way Ron Moore tied it into our own times was quite interesting and extremely clever.  All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.  After seeing that end scene, I’ll never be mean to robots again.

So did I like the ending?  You’re damn right I did.  I can’t wait to watch it again.

What did you think, fellow BSG junkies?

Tonight, the Sci-Fi Channel will bring their glorious epic space drama, Battlestar Galactica, to a close with the two-hour and 11 minute finale, “Daybreak Pt. 2,” which is a continuation of last week’s “Daybreak Pt. 1.”  I can’t tell you how sad I am to see this show end.  Aside from it being one of the most brilliantly written and acted shows in history (says not only me, but scores upon scores of critics), it’s the first show that I’ve ever followed from the very beginning, back before it had much of a following.  I remember being a R.A. when I was sophomore in college and watching the new episodes on Friday nights, writing up any punk ass who had the audacity to intrude on my BSG time.  Then, in my junior and senior years, I upped the ante by not only writing up said punk asses, but doing everything in my power to get them kicked off of campus for disturbing my weekly BSG viewing.  All such adjudications were overturned by my boss.  Oh well.  He must not have been a BSG fan, or else he would have understood.

But the fact of the matter is, I have seen every episode, watched the characters grow and the plot become more intricate, and endured every mid-season and season-ending cliffhanger.  It’s the first and only show I’ve ever followed from beginning to end, and I am seriously bummed that it’s coming to a close.  The good thing is that the show is ending on its own terms; it isn’t being cancelled or drawn out by the network in hopes to put more money in their pockets.  The writers have a story, and they’ve been able to tell their story the way they wanted to from beginning to end.   Even though the show is ending, I can’t help but be glad that it’s ending on the top of its game.

SPOILERS
SPOILERS

QUIT READING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW!

Here are some of my favorite BSG moments in no particular order.  All you fellow junkies feel free to share yours.  

–The season 1 finale when Boomer’s Cylon side was activated and she put two rounds in Commander Adama’s chest.

–”33,” when the Colonial Fleet was forced to jump every 33 minutes to evade a Cylon attack.

–The “One Year Later” flash forward in the season 2 finale when the Cylons invaded and took over New Caprica.  

–When Tyrol and Helo smashed Lt. Thorne’s brains to bits after he tried interrogating Sharon.

–”Exodus Pt. 2″–that episode was more bad ass than most sci-fi movies to come out in several years.

–The death of Starbuck.  That was frakking sad.

–When it was revealed that Col. Tigh, Sam Anders, Chief Tyrol, and Tori were all Cylons.  Double whammy–Starbuck’s not dead!

–Galctica and Pegasus teaming up to blow the resurrection ship to smithereens.  Wow.

–The character development of Gaius Baltar.  Enough said.

–The image of a mushroom-cloud plagued Caprica in the miniseries.

–Surprise!  Earth is a nuclear wasteland!  

–All of season 4, “No Exit” in particular.

–Adama’s rousing speech in “Daybreak Pt. 1.”  

–Felix Gaeta and Tom Zarek futilely trying to take over the Colonial Fleet.  Those were two of the series’ finest, most exciting episodes.

Again, feel free to share your favorite BSG memories, and make sure you catch BSG tonight at 7 p.m. MST on the Sci-Fi Channel.  

If I’m in a bad mood for the next few weeks, you’ll know why.

This is what you get when you type “The Big Dance” into the Google search engine.  Neat!

The Cats beat the Griz and then go on to beat Weber State, leaving them one victory away from the Big Dance.  I can’t believe I actually just typed that sentence.

What the hell is going on here?  How does this kind of stuff happen?

Now, before you all start playing the “Hopefully they won’t choke like the Grizzlies did” card, I’m going to share a bit of wisdom with you, care of former Bobcat All-American defensive end, Devlan Geddes.  He just happens to be one of my bosses.  If the Cats lose tonight, they won’t be choking, because they’ve been pulling all of this sudden basketball expertise out of their asses.  Their loss would simply end their near-Cinderella story.  Well put, I say.

If they DO win, then you can bet I’ll be rooting for the Montana boys the way I urged all Bobcats to root for the Griz when they made the championship way back in December.  Considering everything that’s happened in Bozeman as of late, I think the Bobcats in the Big Dance would be a really great thing for the university and the town.