October 12, 2008
I have decided to take this blog in-house and move it to my own domain under my own hosting. I get more control that way, and I’m kind of a control freak.
Note that the new address is http://blog.raychampagne.com. If you have a bookmark, update it, and if you are getting the emails that update you when I make posts, don’t worry, they will still be coming to you from the new blog.
September 29, 2008
Lori and I went to the Renaissance Festival here on Saturday. We had been told it was one of those things that you just had to check out if you’ve never been to one before, especially if you are into people watching. Well, we consider ourselves “professional” people watchers, so we hopped in the car and drove down to see the sights. I’m pretty glad I did.
The whole thing is set up like a mock town in the middle ages. The storefronts and food places, etc, are all real buildings that sit way at the back of this large field, nestled in some trees. Participants, employees, children, pets and the like are all dressed up in their Renaissance-y gear. People mill about drinking wine, beer, munching on Turkey Legs, while all around them there are street shows, fire eaters, “beggars”, and vendors selling anything from trinkets to $3200 diamond rings.
I won’t bore with all the details of day, but I will share a few things I learned:
1) Wine wenches certainly know how to pour a glass here. I have never chugged wine before, but I learned to that day. You see, if there is less than a half-glass of wine left in the bottle, and they have just filled you up, they will make you drink until that half pour fits in your glass. Not that I was complaining, mind you.
2) Watching a game of giant chess is more entertaining than I would have expected.
3) Debauchery is always fun. On the very first turn, I met up with two men making out with a, um, shall we say ‘busty’ lady. In between make-out sessions, they were drinking beer, and all involved were clearly intoxicated. Oh, and it was like 11AM.
4) Puke and Snot are a pretty funny duo. That one really isn’t explainable unless you’ve been there.
5) One of the oldest forms of entertainment, Riddling, still draws a crowd. What has trees but no birds, what has roads but no cars, what has cities but no people? I’m not telling, figure it out.
All in all, it was a real trip, and I am pretty glad I went. It was worth the drive just to see Lori get smooched by a guy with the muddy face. After watching the giant chess match, we went next door to check out the supposed mud wrestling sideshow. There was a huge pile of stinky mud, and these two beggars put on a show while dunking their heads in it, belly flopping in it, and throwing at each other. Somehow Lori got singled out in the crowd by one of them and was forced to kiss him. She fought it at first, but he wasn’t giving in. I helped by getting a shot right before he gave her a face full of mud:
Lori makes out with Spartan Man
She was a really good sport about it all, even if she did smell pretty bad on the ride home. Click the picture to see it full size!
September 27, 2008
Man, what a great guy…fantastic actor, superb racecar driver/owner, and philanthropist. Kind of ironic that he dies of cancer. Where were you on that one, Karma?
Weird – I watched Slap Shot last weekend, and saw Cool Hand Luke twice this week when it was on Mojo…RIP, my friend. You were one of the few Hollywood stars I can say I am 100% proud of and glad to have been able to enjoy on and off the big screen.
There may be a Paul Newman movie marathon in my near future.
September 24, 2008
It was announced all over the internets this week that the writing that we all saw on the wall as of late was true. A.J. Allmendinger is out at Team Red Bull Racing possibly as early as the Cup race at Talladega, and the very likely replacement for him next year is Scott Speed. Mike Skinner, who is the current “mentor” for both Speed and Allmendinger, could be tapped to finish out the season in the # 84 Red Bull Toyota.
Read More over at FastMachines.com
September 24, 2008
I think that there probably not a person on this planet with radio/TV/Internet access that doesn’t know about the looming financial crisis that we as a country are facing. The problem, at its very core, is a series of terrible investments that the entire world, and more specifically investment companies in this country, made in the mortgage “boom” of the last few years. I cannot begin to sum up the whole situtation better than the people over at NPR did with their Giant Pool of Money podcast did, so go on over to iTunes, search for it, or see my previous post. It’s worth the hour of your time and the 99 cents to download and listen. Suffice it to say that investment companies were extremely greedy and started to make investments in mortages to people who could not, and should not, have them. Fast forward a few years to now, and all those poor investments are falling apart. Now we as a country seem poised to take the brunt of the burden of a fix in the form of a 700 BILLION dollar bailout. Your tax dollars hard at work. Bah!
You know what really frosts my ass about this whole thing? It’s not really the fact that we will have to pay to fix the problem, or that CEO’s of failed companies seem poised to make their fortune and walk away, or that government is yet again putting us further into debt, or any of that. It’s the fact that NO ONE is talking about the crux of the problem – the failure of us as a nation to take personal responsibility for the failed mortagages that many people took on. Financially responsible people like you and me all knew better than to take on mortgages that we could not afford. Everyone is bitching about the government and “predatory lending” but Jesus, take some personal effing responsibility! If you can’t even figure out if you can’t afford that 500,000 dollar house on your 50K combined income, you probably should be shot in the head. Now people like us have to deal with upside-down loans and more effing taxes to support those jackasses that couldn’t figure out $1+$1 does not equal $2000. Even worse is that we are in the spot where if we don’t bail them out, we will just suffer more. It’s just completely frustrating. Yes, the mortgage industry and their investment backers effed up royally. I blame them too, but seems like everyone is so focused on the mortgage failures that they don’t stop to think what idiots we are as a country.
To end on a good note – I walk the dog daily and see at least a half dozen nice homes that have been foreclosed upon. They are not hard to spot – unkempt lawns, seizure notices in every window, driveways with grass growing in the cracks between the pavement, etc. For the most part, they have sat vacant for weeks and months on end, with seemingly no realtor or buyer activity, but in the past few days, I have seen dozens of potential homeowners looking at them. To me, this is a sign that maybe, at least locally, we have bottomed out and are at the very beginning stages of an upswing. This gives me a glimmer of hope that the end might be in sight and that the panic to not buy is starting to fade. That of course does me no personal good, since I know for a fact that if I were to try to sell right now, I would be competing with homes comparable to mine that would be selling for 30 to 70 thousand dollars less than what I paid a little over a year ago. But it’s something.
September 17, 2008
It must be something about getting older, but I have become less and less entertained by music on my iPod lately and more and more entertained by podcasts. It started with a few sports ones, then moved on to shows like NPR’s This American Life, and then moved to politically motivated shows like HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, then on to my newest favorite, which I’ll mention later. TAL is a cool hipster kinda show where they pick a theme every week and tell stories about that theme, usually in the form of the “everyman”. It’s a pretty interesting and entertaining show most of the time, but not something that one could say that they gained much intellectually from.
A few months ago, I was walking the dog, and fired up the topic of the week, “Giant Pool of Money“, a special hour long podcast explaining exactly what had happened to cause the crippling housing market bubble burst and who was responsible for it. I was mesmerized by the entire story, which was told in a narrative style, but with the added bonus of bringing in the perspectives of those people who were hit hardest by the phenomenon. It was completely fascinating to hear exactly why and what happened, from a global perspective, and it really opened my mind up to wonder about our global economy. I am by no means an economist or even know much about complicated financial matters, so it took me by complete surprise that I enjoyed this podcast. Anyway, if you are at all interested why we are at where we are at, I suggest you spend the 99 cents and purchase it from iTunes. I also would suggest subscribing to the podcast. If you subscribe, you get the current week’s podcast for free every week. Free is good!
But back to the point I was trying to make – this episode of TAL was so popular it quickly became the most downloaded podcast of the history of the show, and it actually ended up spinning off another radio show/podcast called Planet Money. I can safely say that I am stupidly addicted to listening to these guys tell me stories and educate me on World Economics. From learning about the banking crisis to China funding our economy to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this is just a great piece of work by the folks at NPR. I never thought I would look forward to a weekly economics lesson, but I certainly do now.
If you are interested, stop by the show’s podcast home page, or search for it in iTunes. You won’t be disappointed. Scared, maybe, when you find out what a financial mess we are still headed towards, but not disappointed.
September 13, 2008
There’s a funny site out there called the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator:
http://www.personal-space.com/palin/index.php
My name would be Axe Diesel. That’s pretty badass. I think I might go down to city hall and change it permanently. 
What’s yours?
September 11, 2008
I know I have been very bad about keeping up with this whole blog thing for the past few months, but the summer in Minneapolis is something that you can’t turn your back on, or it will just get bored and run away. If you don’t pay attention, one day you’ll be sitting around enjoying the sun, then the next you’ll be freezing your ass off while the wind tries to whisk you away like Dorothy. So, I’ve been doing just that, enjoying the summer, while admittedly neglecting this blog.
So, to get back (hopefully) into the swing of things, I’m going to kick off the fall blogging season not by so much mourning those who fell in the Sept 11 attacks back in 2001, but rather celebrating the birthday of the closest thing I will ever have to a daughter. Libby turns 7 today, and as my old boss put it – she is “one of the best things to come out of an otherwise sad day”. Happy Birthday Libby!
This is by no means a post to slight those that lost their lives in that sad day. I was riding the bus home today and caught a flag in one of the courtyards of the big buildings downtown flying half mast, and my mind immediately went back to retracing my every step of that fateful morning. Everyone has their story that they like to tell about what they were doing when the shit went down, and I won’t bore anyone by sharing mine, but let’s just say that it put me in a dark place for the 40 minute ride home. Such worthless killing, such blind panic, such patriotism, such utter madness for a 24 hour period and beyond. It’s hard to fathom what it must have been like to be directly involved in that field in Pennsylvania, in the Pentagon, in the Word Trade Centers, or in any one of the 4 planes that had the unfortunate fate of participating in the worst attack our country has seen since Pearl Harbor. I thankfully have never had an experience that makes me relive personal, agonizing horrors on a daily basis, and I hopefully never will. September 11, 2001 was enough for this kid.
One of the things that makes these memories bittersweet for me is that I get to remember every year on this day that one really really cool thing came out of it – my little Libby was born. I still remember picking her up at the “farm” in Western Massachusetts in late November, her itty bitty little body snuggled up, alternating between Lori and I, snoring away, having that smell that puppies innately have. On the way home, we were looking at her papers and realized that she was brought into this world on a day filled with evil and hatred. Lori immediately decided on the name Liberty, Libby for short. And you know what? She has turned out to be one of the best companions that a person could have. She knows nothing of said attacks, or the sheer hatred we as humans seem to have for each other, only that she likes to play ball, sleep, snore, fart, and eat. And she’d never hurt a fly. So, thanks, whoever brought her to us, you couldn’t have a done better good deed.
Libby in ball heaven
Oh, and if you are a Facebook member, Libby has her own Dogbook page and is accepting friends! Visit her page here.
August 27, 2008
NASCAR and Budweiser recently announced that the Budweiser Shootout, an exhibition race held during Speedweeks prior to the Daytona 500, will undergo a major format change starting with the 2009 race. For the past 30 years, the race sponsor extended invitations to those drivers who won a pole the previous season, or previous winners of the race. Now, the race will only be open to the top 6 teams from each manufacturer. The top 6 teams will be determined by the previous year’s points position.
It is quite obvious the underlying reason for this shift in how the race is run: Coors is now the sponsor of the Pole Award every week, whereas Bud held that sponsorship. The folks at Anheuser-Busch did not deny this, in fact, they cited it as the fundamental reason for the change.
Read more over at FastMachines.com
August 13, 2008
So the other day I wrote a quick-hit blog post about Comcast’s commercials and how I enjoyed them. I also happened to mention that I thought my bill was a little high, which prompted some action from some kind of team that must be tasked with finding these things. They got in touch with me and found a way for me to save a nice chunk of money for the next 6 months while upgrading my service. So, just printing a reverse rant here, they were very helpful and nice the whole time.
I just need to remember to check the bill in six months…
