Warning: This one is going to be even lamer than normal.

Look at this picture:

These two guys are brothers who are both professional drummers.

The guy on the left is Carmine, the guy on the right is Vinny.

I first heard Carmine play with Jeff Beck in a band called Beck, Bogart, & Appice. Not long after that I heard him play in an older band called Vanilla Fudge. He also played in Rod Stewart’s band, I think that was during the embarrassing “do you think I’m sexy” disco years. I think he’s been in a couple of thousand other bands too. The only one popping into my head now is a session appearance on Tommy Bolin’s last album.

Click to listen to Carmine with Vanilla Fudge on You Keep Me Hanging On.

Either during high school or my first, first year in college (yes you read that correctly) my friend Larry told me that Carmine had a brother who was also a drummer. Vinny. I only know of two gigs Vinny has had. He was in Black Sabbath and played on the Mob Rules record, then when Ronnie Dio left to start his own band Vinny went with him. I know he played with Dio for a long time and he went back to Sabbath at least once too.

Click to listen to Vinnie with a reunited Dio-era Black Sabbath on TV Crimes.

(Side note: I saw Vinny play with Dio at the Club Casino Ballroom in Hampton Beach, NH on the Strange Highways tour. Late 90’s, I think. I was never a Dio fan, but I was definitely a fan of the stuff Ronnie Dio did with Rainbow. The Rising/On Stage lineup was a fantastic band. I had heard Dio with Sabbath and liked what I heard, but I was never that big a Sabbath fan. Dio’s solo band didn’t do anything for me. I don’t know why. I consented to see them in Hampton Beach though in the hopes that I might hear a Rainbow song or two. The crowd that night was nuts. There were actually stage divers. At one point some guy jumped up on stage and took the dive and Ronnie Dio looked terrified. I could almost hear him thinking, “we’re old… what the hell are you people doing?” It was seriously funny. Late in the show we saw a guy get pushed up onto the stage. He had no interest in diving off but didn’t know what to do. He stood up there next to Dio for a second, smiled at him… he may even have waved at him even though they were about 2 feet apart, and then was escorted out of the building. Years later I was playing with Break Even. We were discussing how cool Rainbow’s song “Stargazer” is to play when I mentioned that Dio show. Turns out the smiling waving guy was Break Even’s other guitar player, Steve. It really is a small world. End side note)

The confusion, pain, and suffering (for Larry and me at least) stems from their last name:

Appice.

Forgive my poor phonetic spelling attempts here, but when I first heard of Carmine I guessed his name was pronounced something like AH-piss-ee. Larry, after actually looking at their faces, thought it was probably much more Italian and pronounced it ah-PEACH-ee. I caved in quickly and thought that he was probably right and adopted his pronunciation as my own.

Then at that Dio show in Hampton Beach Ronnie Dio said his name to the audience. I couldn’t make out what he said, but I knew without question it was not ah-PEACH-ee. We didn’t know what the hell he said. So we remained confused for years upon years upon years.

Until this week.

During the dying days of Napster I went completely overboard with downloading, thinking incorrectly that the mother lode was about to be taken away from me. I downloaded mountains of stuff and then never listened to it. Last Christmas Jen bought me an 80 gig iPod Classic. I have since taken it upon myself to fill that sucker as close to capacity as possible. This brought me to all of those Napster files I had never touched. Included in the mountain was just about the entire Black Sabbath catelog. Over the last week or so I have been in a weird place musically, just jonzing for 70’s metal bands. I put all Ozzy, Dio, and Ian Gillan Sabbath records onto my iPod and have been listening to them while driving to and from work. The other day I had reached the very forgetable Live Evil album. On that record Vinny does a drum solo. Upon completion, Ronnie Dio yells out his name.

Vinny AH-piss-ee!

At last! Thought I, the great question is answered irrefutably! My original attempt at pronouncing Appice was correct! I got to work and immediately sent Larry and email telling him of this great news. There was much rejoycing. Happiness for all!

I told you this one was going to be lamer than usual.

Good day

I didn’t see the Bruins game last night. I checked the score before I went to bed. They beat Buffalo 7-4.

That’s not the incredible part. The incredible part is they were down 4-2 in the first period.

and they came back.

These are not the Bruins I know. The Bruins I know would have lost 7-2 after giving up in the first period. I think you should be able to watch the game highlights if you click here. I actually downloaded that video this morning, intending to post it here myself, but a combination of copyright conscience and the absolutely dreadful Buffalo play by play announcer has made me decide to just link to it. I’ll trash the video when I get home. I don’t know the guys name, but he is the 2nd worst sports announcing voice I’ve ever heard. The worst does (did?) play by play for the Red Wings on the radio. Who was it that decided a cracking, prepubescent, squeaking voice was a good choice for commentary?

But I digress…

The Bruins made the playoffs last year. I didn’t think they would but they did, and they stood up about as well as possible for a team that was eliminated in the first round. They weren’t all that good last year, but they handled themselves well.

This year I expected more of the same. Not very good. Fragile. Prone to caving in when things got tough. I know it’s only November, but it sure looks like I was wrong again.

First in the Northeast division.
8-1-1 in their last 10 games.
A whopping 12-3-4 over all.
2nd in the Eastern conference, only 2 points behind the Rangers with 3 games in hand.
Mark Savard, 25 points in 19 games.
Phil Kessel, who was a healthy scratch in the playoffs last year, 9 goals already.
Patrice Bergeron, still alive despite last year’s head injury and playing like his old self.
Denis Wideman is +10!!!!
Tim Thomas… TIM THOMAS!!! 1.78 goals against average and a .944 save percentage! They left him off the all-star ballot despite the fact that he is clearly the King of all Goalies!

I try not to get overly optimistic about sports. Yes I know Boston is the capital of all pro sports with the recent unbelievable successes the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics have had, but we went so long doing nothing but losing that I still find it hard to look on the sports-bright-side. I still expect to lose, and I still expect the Bruins to revert to their old losing selves.

But for now I am just going to sit back and enjoy this.

I just watched this and am now in full on geek mode…

What can I say? I love Star Trek. Probably not as much as Star Wars mind you. Star Trek is lacking in the light saber department.

The new flick comes out on my birthday. Guess what I want to do that night?

I haven’t seen the new Bond movie yet, but I am itching to do that. I was thinking about seeing if Jen wanted to go see the Lowell Devils game Saturday night, but now I think Bond is the better option.

Getting back to the Space theme, check out this story:

Astronaut loses tool bag during spacewalk

In summary, an astronaut doing a space walk on the ISS had the zero-g equivalent of a grease gun in a tool bag. Some how it started leaking and got lubricant all over all of the other tools in the bag. The astronaut took out the gun and started cleaning it off… all while standing outside of the station. While she was doing this she did not see the tool bag drifting away from her. By the time she noticed it had floated out of her reach.

This poses the question: Actually it doesn’t pose any questions to anyone other than a supreme geek like me, but what can you do? Anyway, now that the bag is officially an artificial sattelite of the Earth, should we give it a name? Also, has anyone at NASA calculated the approximate time it will take for it to be sucked back into the atmosphere to die a horrible firey death? And did the producers of Dead Like Me have anything to do with it?

And speaking of Dead Like Me why the hell didn’t anyone tell me there was going to be a movie? A direct to DVD release possibly scheduled for February 17, 2009? Is this the best direct to DVD news ever? Even better than the direct to DVD Futurama movies? Yes I think it is! Yes I think Robert is happy right now!

We went to an arts and crafts store tonight intending to look at do-it-yourself wedding invitation kits.

We got more…
Much more…

Invitation kit? Yes
Program kit? Yes
Guest book and pen? Yes
Cake topper? Yes
Cake knife and server? Yes
Place cards? Yes

Check all that stuff off of the wedding to-do list babie, we got it all!

We also got some cool ideas for flower-free centerpieces. I propose we use nothing but candles and set off some fire alarms!

Now we sit in our office looking at more centerpiece ideas, installing visual studio .net so Jen can teach me how real web programmers do things, (you mean they don’t write HTML code in notepad like me?) and listening to Blue Oyster Cult.

Yup. It’s been a weird 70’s metal kinda week for me. I’ll probably write about that later (after I finish plowing through the Black Sabbath catalog I have on my iPod).

Just what I need, a new blog.

Yahoo 360? Check
Myspace? Check – 3 times (one for me, one for my old band, and one for a page I keep some of my crappy music on)
Facebook? Check
Virb? Check – 2 times (one for my old band and one for another page for me to keep some of my crappy music on)
Blogger? Check… now.

I have no reason to start this. My myspace blog has been my blogging home for a few years and gets maybe 20 or so hits per post. Family members actually read it and stuff like that. I’m bored with it though. I will write here for a while, link it to my facebook acount and my myspace account and see what happens.

I am going to try to write to this a lot. Possibly even daily. Not that I have anything all that important to add to the universe, but just because I kinda like it.

So for those who are new to the Story of Rob, I am a 37 year old programmer living in Methuen, MA. I have a fiance who (whom?) I am crazy about. Her name is Jen. The wedding will be a small, intimate affair for close family and friends on May 30, 2009. Jen has two kids, Bellana is seven and Harry is five. I’m nuts about the two of them as well.

This past weekend Jen and I went on an engaged encounter weekend. This is a course that can be used in place of pre-cana. For those who are not Catholic, pre-cana is a course that you have to complete in order to be married in the Catholic church. It usually runs a couple of hours a week. Engaged encounter crams the whole thing into one weekend.

We went to a place called The Marist House in Framingham, MA on Friday night. From what I could tell it’s a retirement home for priests. They showed each of us to our rooms… separate rooms. Put simply, that sucked. It was dormitory style quarters with two people to a room. After a little time spent wondering what was going to happen we were all, 19 couples I think, ushered into the main meeting room and the festivities started. There were two couples who presented different topics to us, with added input from a priest… who by coincidence happened to be the priest who is going to do our ceremony on May 30, 2009. One couple would give a talk on some aspect of marriage, then we were given a list of questions. Jen and I split up for about 20 minutes to write as much on the questions as we could, then we were brought together again to read each other’s answers. The purpose of this exercise is to point out different aspects of our relationship that need to be worked on prior to getting married.

We did this from 8pm Friday until a little after 11. Then from 8am to 10:30pm Saturday, and from 8am to 2:30pm Sunday. It was grueling. It was also a very positive experience for us. I went into this fearing some sort of bomb would drop. I half expected one of the topics to point out a glaring hole in our readiness. We both felt that we were ready to get married. We were both very confident that our decision was the right one. But… what if an issue came up over the weekend that proved us wrong?

Nothing did. Every single presentation, topic, or discussion was one that Jen and I had had already. Sometimes they were in slightly different contexts, and they were never as focused on a single point as during the weekend, but everything they threw at us had been covered already. The weekend was fantastic. It proved to us that we are ready to get married. We are making the right decision.

Having said that, it wasn’t all wonderful. Jen and I were both raised in Catholic families. We both went through CCD all the way to Confirmation. We also both developed serious questions about religion and faith in general as we grew older. We both waffle back and forth between believing in God and not. Jen says she’s about 50/50. I’m more like 99% atheist and 1% believer, and that 1% is pretty sure that no organized religion has things right. I haven’t felt very Catholic since my late teens, and the sex abuse scandals have pretty much pushed me right out the door. I spent my high school years working at a church. I was part janitor and part groundskeeper. No priest ever did anything to me. It didn’t matter. There were priests raping children while their superiors turned a blind eye. It is inexcusable. In Boston everyone up to the Cardinal in charge knew what was going on and nothing was ever done to stop it. If a priest was caught raping a child in one parish he was moved to another parish… I guess so he could have his pick of a fresh group of children. Then when everything went public, how did Rome deal with Cardinal Law? They moved him to a different diocese. From Boston to… Rome. He was promoted. It’s vile and disgusting and inexcusable.

Rant over.

My brother and his wife, and my sister and her husband had all done engaged encounter weekends and I was warned that it will get a little religious, but the couple discussions would be good enough to overshadow my discomfort with faith. They were right. Some of the talks, especially later in the weekend, were very centered around God’s place in our relationship. I admit to zoning out on a lot of that. I tried to focus on practical matters that could help us build a stronger marriage. There was enough of that to keep me going…

With one exception.

Natural Family Planning.

First of all, the woman who gave this presentation was awful. She had a tortuously squeaky voice and spoke at a volume level approaching that of a jet plane at take off. It physically hurt to listen to this woman. As for the topic, it was the same idea as Intelligent Design. First, take a ridiculous faith based theory, Creationism, and give it a more technical name and call it science, Intelligent Design. In this case it was the rhythm method of counting days between ovulations on a calendar in order to prevent pregnancy that was given the new technical sounding name, Natural Family Planning… it was even given an acronym, NFP… and called science. The presenter used the word “science” six times in her introduction. I used the word “bullshit” about 80 times. We were told about the wonderful success rate NFP has at preventing pregnancy. 90% on average. Somehow I have a difficult time seeing a 1 in 10 failure rate as success, especially when there are birth control methods such as IUDs that have about a 99.9% success rate.

Oh and for the record, there were two couples presenting to us who both use the NFP techniques. One has 6 kids. They other has 2 but they have only been married a few years.

The other thing that continuously pissed me off all weekend long was the related “children are always a blessing” idea. We were continuously told that we shouldn’t worry about little things like financial situations when wondering when to have kids. Just have them. Apparently the church doesn’t object to people bringing children into the world when they are unable to support them. It seems the church is in favor of children living on the street starving to death. Nice thought, eh?

But again, despite my natural tendency toward being a cynical asshole, the weekend was a wonderful experience and I am very happy we did it. I feel closer to Jen then ever and I have never felt more ready to get married.

So that wraps up the weekend. What else can I blather on about?

How about music?

As the end of the year approaches it’s time to start looking back on what music defines the year for me. Last year it was Rush’s Snakes and Arrows that blew my doors off. In 2006 it was All Your Things are Gone by Victory at Sea. This year it is a tie. Two records, both that are totally out of character for my normal musical tastes. Why? Because they both come from New York. I feel dirty just thinking that.

The first record is not a new record. A little research shows me that it’s been released twice, the first time in 2005. It’s something I stumbled on in February or March while messing around with virb.com. I was in the process of failing to complete the RPM challenge (again) and stumbled across virb as a site to host music. It’s a social networking site along the lines of myspace and facebook but with a little more hosting options for bands. I was clicking on random music profiles and some how got seriously in the mood for female folkies. One artist I stumbled on was Jenny Owen Youngs. Her album Batten the Hatches was posted in it’s entirety and I just went off the deep end for it. I listened to it all the time for months. “F**k was I” is the song that most people gravitate to, and it’s a good one, but I tend to go for “Drinking Song”, “From Here”, and “Voice on Tape” (a bass guitar balad… how many of those do you hear on a day to day basis?) a little more. Every song on it is a gem in my book. This being the 21st century and all, discovering a new artist generally leads you directly to myspace and this was no exception for me. Reading the Jenny Owen Youngs myspace gives you numberous references to another artist named Bess Rogers ( I think I read somewhere they went to college together). I went to her myspace page, gave a listen, and ran to iTunes to pick up her album Decisions Based On Information. That’s my other personal album of the year. Again, every song is a favorite, but I would single out “I Would Never”, “You and Me”, and “Sunday” (odd time signatures get me every time) as extra-favs. Rogers’ record is much more Beatlesque than Youngs’. They really don’t sound much alike at all, although it seems like they work together on each other’s stuff, and they have what I think is an electronic studio only band together. I haven’t checked that out yet. Anyway, those are my 2008 albums of the year. If only they weren’t both based out of New York. Gross.

Speaking of RPM… see how I did that?… I am currently in the process of failing at another album recording challenge. National Solo Album Month. The challenge is to write, record, mix, and master a minumum length 30 minute album within the month of November. I have two unfinished songs. It’s November 18th. Guess what ain’t getting finished. I was sort of gung-ho for this on Novermber 1st, but I really haven’t had the time to make any real effort to do this. What free time I have had has been much better spent with Jen. Still… I might try to make a push to get a little closer to the finish over the next 12 days.

Right then… that’s about all I have to say right now. Let’s see if I can get a writing/journal/blogging head of steam going and post again tomorrow.