OH Day 3 - Rock and Roll, Robust Porters, and Red Ryder BB Guns
I spent most of today in Cleveland, my prior knowledge of which did not extend past the Drew Carey Show Theme Song:
My mom and I use to watch this back to back with Whose Line when I was young which is probably a big part of my weird comedy nerdiness
Before I got to Cleveland though, I stopped at Mrs. Turbo's Cookies outside of Columbus for some coffee. The coffee was very good, and the cashier was super friendly and chatted with me for a while. She let me have a day old Halloween Monster cookie for free. It was almost too adorable to eat. Almost.
After a bit of a drive, I made it to Cleveland just in time for lunch. I went to Great Lakes Brewing Company, figuring I could kill two birds with one stone and sample the local beers as well. Both the beer and the burger was exemplary. I got the Old World Burger, which was a bacon cheeseburger with a special BBQ sauce made with their porter. It was delicious, though absolutely gigantic. For beer I got four samples: the Christmas Ale, The Nosferatu Imperial Red Ale, the Oatmeal Stout, and the Barrel Aged Imperial Smoked Porter. I liked everything quite a bit, but the porter was probably my favorite. It was full bodied with a nice bourbon finish. I loved it.
The four beers were all kind of strong, so I walked around for a bit and got a coffee at Koffie Cafe. It really hit the spot.
Fueled up, I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Shaped like a giant glass pyramid, the museum is large and full of enough memorabilia to interest diehard fans and passers-by alike. On the bottom floor was a tribute to early pioneers of blues, jazz, country, and folk music that inspired what become rock and roll. I thought this was a really great introduction into the museum, and I've always been fascinated by roots music so I was really happy to listen to people I had and hadn't heard of that inspired the music I love today.
From there it was basically wall to wall memorabilia. They had some very impressive gets like Bo Diddley's guitars, James Brown's Jumpsuits, one of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust suits, and things from every Beatle. They did a good job doing gigantic fan favorites while also broadening the scope for smaller bands. I feel like the most surprising omission for me was the Kinks since they had stuff from just about every other big British Invasion band even Herman's Hermits for christ's sake. Theres a good chance though that Ray Davies might have been difficult to get licensing with or something like that rather than the museum ignoring the band, because that wouldn't exactly be out of character for him. The thing I was most surprised to learn is that John Mellencamp whatever you think of his music is a surprisingly good painter.
On the upper levels, there was a special exhibit on the 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine. It was really cool to see the whole history of music and current events within the US play out on Magazine covers. I really liked seeing letters written by Hunter S. Thompson laden with poetry and profanity. There was also a much creepier letter from Charles Manson trying to set the record straight on an article they had written about him. The scariest part is that it was pretty well-written and affable, but then he signed it with swastika so you know he's still a maniac.
One thing that couldn't have been intentional that cracked me up was that for some reason based on Rolling Stone Covers national tragedies always seemed to line up with new Mike Myers movies. Talk about tonal dissonance putting Columbine on the same cover as Austin Powers, like who edited that thing?
After the museum, I ended up chatting with a woman and her four year old son in the parking lot for a while. Again, that mid-Western friendliness shines through. She told me about some good things to see around Cleveland, and he told me where all the coolest trains were.
From there, I took a brief detour to see the house where they filmed a Christmas Story. Thankfully, I did not shoot my eye out.
From there, it was on to the next open mic. It was at a bar called Barrel on High. It was a nice bar, and I got my second porter of the day partly because I though it had a funny name, The Thirsty Dog Old Leghumper. It wasn't as good as the barrel aged one, but pretty good nonetheless.
Unfortunately the day was kinda rainy and crappy outside, so the mic was pretty sparsely attended. While there wasn't a lot of people there, it was a very supportive crowd. I thought the host, Sean Somerville, was very funny and seemed like a really good guy. I was a little late to sign up because of the drive from Cleveland, but he gave me a pretty good spot anyway, way different than when I showed up late in NYC.
My personal favorites of the night were guys named Dan Loper and Jameson Rogers. Dan did a bit I really enjoyed about how as an adult seeing bartenders in the real world is like when you're a kid and you see your teacher outside of school: "You always say something dumb like, 'Oh I didn't know you.. had legs." And Jameson did a bit I really liked about how he feels like he's turning into an Italian stereotype: "The other day I was just eating rigatoni and crying about how much I love my mom".
My own set was probably the best set I'd done in front of small crowd like that. I tried a mix of old and new stuff, which made me feel good that everything pretty much worked. It was definitely a solid mic, and one that I feel would only have been better if the weather had cooperated.
Favorite Line of the Night: Walta Yoseph- "I was feeling empty inside, so my friend told me to take a walk. 'Great,' I said, 'Now I'm empty inside and outside'"
Favorite Random Sighting: Dogs Only Veterinarian; The Joint Chiropractor; Dark Star Avenue; A big billboard that said "Discover Ashland: World Headquarters of Nice People"
Regional Observation: I've seen so many highway road signs for Adult Superstores. I always thought stuff off of highways were generally necessities, food, gas, lodgings, that kind of thing. Who's ever been driving, and thought you know what I NEED: porn?
Albums Listened To: Good News for People Who Love Bad News by Modest Mouse (a lot of people think this is their sell out album but there's still some good songs there); Goon by Tobias Jesso Jr.; Gospel Songs -7" split by Brian Fallon and Chuck Ragan; Goths by the Mountain Goats; Graceland by Paul Simon (he may have terribly treated his backing band, but its a damn fine album); Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Single by Ghostface Killah & DOOM; The Great Divide/ Sleeping in the Trees by the Hall Trees; The Great Rocksteady Swindle by the Slackers
People's Favorite Jokes:
I didn't think get any today so here's a joke of the day from the internet- Did you hear the joke about the butter?
I do not think I should tell you because you might spread it around...
Song of the Day:
A really beautiful song, based on a collaboration the singer Vic did with a writer where they interviewed people in Iraq so the actual story of song is completely real
