A Week of Records, Friday the 13th, and One Awesome Guitar!

I just found out Bob Moore wants to put seat shakers & Smell-O-Vision in his River Cinema theater. Are you kidding me? How fucking cool would that be to bring back the old '50's movie experience?! I knew there was a reason I didn't go to Carmike anymore. I don't even care if the ticket prices go up, it'd totally by worth it to have an interactive movie experience complete with hokey gimmicks. Yaaay Bob Moore! He has to have complete mall domination, though, so nothing's set in stone just yet.

Karissa and I went down to Fargo last weekend. We took Isabella to Chuck E. Cheese with her grandma, Kayla and Kacey for a little treat, let her play some games & such. After that, she left with them and Karissa & I stayed in Fargo for a night to ourselves. We hit the mall so Karissa could check out that kitchen store where I had to convince her to buy a tortilla press, then on to some antique stores, then checked into our room at the Sleep Inn. The Sleep Inn was not a very good motel. Karissa immediately found a bunch of things wrong with it (showing an obvious lack of care by the housekeeping staff), and we had to move once because our door wouldn't latch shut. The carpets were dingy, which is forgivable in the hallways but not so much in the rooms, and they hadn't replaced their January HBO listings, which is just plain annoying. It makes you think the room hadn't been touched since then.

After criticizing the cleanliness of our room, we headed off to the Speakeasy, where we gourged ourselves on awesome Prime Rib that didn't really even need the salty meat juice that came with it. The next day we hit Famous Daves before heading home with a van full of vinyl records. Okay, maybe not full of them, but I did get way more than I thought I would. I was even holding myself back. I did find some awesome records, though--Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry, even Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, an album I never thought I'd get to own!

Karissa has been hearing about my desire to get a Gretsch guitar for a long time, now. She's been very patient about it, but last weekend she finally said, "you know, I think we should just find you a good guitar." At the time we were too late in the evening to go to Margeurite's, and the big pawn shop in Fargo that I thought would have a good selection of guitars sucked.

So, we waited until the next weekend to just go to Kenny's Music, since I played their semi-hollowbodies before and been treated real nice, even when I'm just buying picks. After looking over three or four, I zero'd in on a blood-colored (walnut, but looks like blood to me) Gretsch Electromatic, made last Spring for Gretsch's 125th anniversary. As I was playing it, Kenny (the owner) wandered in and remarked that I sounded like I could have been in his band (playing old rockabilly). I was suprised that I never realized the owner of a guitar store would be in a band, seems like an obvious assumption. It was flattering, and even though I figure he was sucking up to make a sale, it didn't hurt. He took the guitar to go find a case for it (which he gave me for half off), I heard him playing some scales on it, and shit on me is he good! It's a pleasure and intimidation at the same time to hear someone playing my guitar like that.

I didn't even get to take it home right away to play it! we had to run other errands so I could be patient.

It sounds incredible to me, and I still can't believe it's mine. This must be what Wayne felt like when he got that stupid Strat in Wayne's World. It sounds great through my amp and pedals, too!

Later on that Friday, we went to Friday the 13th. I'll have a more extended review over at the movie blog, but for now, I'll say this: I expected a movie with not much plot, a lot of good killing, annoying teens, sex, drugs, and maybe a little depth. I was not disappointed in the least. My expectations were no surpassed, either, but that's just fine by me. I was looking for a good ol' Jason flick, and that's what I got. The only difference was that this Jason runs. It makes him slightly more human, but at the same time more predatorial. I predicted most of the killings (not out loud), but still came from the theater feeling fulfilled from watching a good Jason movie. Is it Rob Zombie good? Well, I think that bar's been set a bit high by his version of Halloween, so no, it's not Rob Zombie good. But it's way better than the last 3 or 4 Jason movies. Sorry, Kane Hodder.