August 2002

So I went to go see Mitch Hedberg for the 3rd time last night at the Addison Improv. I had seen him previously at the Laff Stop in Houston, and the Capitol City Comedy Club in Austin. I've been a huge fan ever since I saw him on some TV comedy show, and have since turned a huge number of people on to him. In my opinion he is one of the best comedians I've ever seen. A truly unique style and viewpoint punctuate his hilarious material likable demeanor. Mitch just seems like a guy you'd like to hang out with. Every time I've seen him he's been absolutely hilarious, and this show was no exception.

There were several opening comics. Dave Little and Lynn Shawcroft were especially funny. When Mitch finally came on he seemed really low key at first. A bit reserved, possibly a little down, or just tired a bit (this was, after all, the second show of the night), but he quickly got into the flow and the endless laughs started flowing. Now the things about comedians is you inevitably hear some of the same material each time you see them since they can't crank out an entirely new act every night. With Mitch, I've never found this to be a problem. Somehow I find every joke just as funny as the first time I ever heard it. However Mitch had a ton of new material this show, and it was in fact the first show I'd seen where he didn't just start taking "requests" for his classic material towards the end of the show. It was also the first show I had seen where he didn't perform many of his "greatest hits", most notably his "Smackie the Frog" routine. None of this however detracted from the show. It was at least as good as every other performance I had seen of his.

When we went to see him in Austin, my friend, Dudemac, and his wife had brought their digital camera in hopes of getting a picture with Mitch. My friend Esteban spotted Mitch exiting the club and asked him for an autograph which Mitch gladly signed. Dudemac then had me take a picture of him and his wife with Mitch. I also wanted to get an autograph and picture but I really didn't want to be a nuisance so I let Mitch slip out since he seemed to be trying to get out quickly. Later we found that due to a camera glitch all the pics that had been taken on the digital camera were gone including the ones with Mitch. DOH! So this time we were determined to try again! After the show we immediately went to where we thought he might exit, and sure enough there were he and Lynn leaving the club! Dudemac quickly yelled "Hey Mitch! Can we get a picture?" He and Lynn were both really accommodating and friendly and posed for several pics with us all! I'll post them as soon as Dudemac gets them off his camera. We hope to get some more pics and maybe an autograph at his Austin show in November.

All in all it was a great show as usual that made our faces hurt from laughing so much, and actually getting to say hi and take a picture was extremely cool. Be sure and check his schedule at www.mitchhedberg.net and go to see him if he comes anywhere near you. Then I can add you to my list of converts ;) Quite simply, he's one of the funniest and most brilliant comedians of all time.

Well I'm off for a nice 3 day weekend, since Labor Day is monday, and ironically you don't have to go to work on Labor day. Shouldn't it be "No Labor Day"?;) I'm going to Dallas to hang out with my good bud, Esteban. We're going to see Mitch Hedberg, a hilarious comedian. I've seen him twice before in clubs and many times on TV. He's been on David Letterman, and had a Comedy Central special, etc. Damn funny guy. Saturday a bunch of us are going to Six Flags (a theme park with rollercoasters and all that). We have a ton of free tickets. Dudemac and I are ALWAYS winning stuff from the local radio station. So much so that people are beginning to think we are some kind of radio mafia. I used to work there as a DJ too, and know many of the loca radio folk, so sometimes I do use my "connections". Sunday I hope to go find some geocaches. At some point we're going to take my Star Wars DVD's to our friends house to enjoy his 63" television and Dolby 5.1 surround sound (no, the original Star Wars trilogy is not actually out on DVD, but again...I have connections and ingenius geeky friends.[grin] However I don't consider this piracy, since I have bought numerous copies of the various edition and will damn sure be buying the official DVD's whenever Lucas finally decides to release them).

So everyone have a fun safe weekend and labor on! Woooooooooooooooo!
*Heath parties until unconscious*

So my friend Dudemac wrote this article about the onslaught of various “Rate My …” sites. (BTW, that site wanted a new slogan, so they’re adopting the one I came up with for them; “eyejabber.com. Sucking your life away…one byte at a time”)

This has given me the following idea:

www.ratemyratemysite.com

I want to make a site where you rate the various “Rate My …” sites. Why? Because I find it extremely amusing, and was quite pleased with myself for coming up with the idea. However I’m really lazy and it probably won’t happen so someone else should do it and give me the credit. I’m a great “idea man”. Just need someone else to implement them.

So I've been reading a bunch of people's online diaries lately, and it just reminded me of how I really wanted to make frequent posts on my website, but couldn't be bothered because it was a pain in my ass. I had to manually update the web page, and the thought of any kind of archives made my head hurt. I would have to make a separate archive index page with links to each individual archive, and then manually make each month's individual archive page etc.

Thus these free online diaries seemed appealing because all the work is done for you. You type it in and, POOF, it's on your diary page. I really wanted to have my random thoughts page be on my own website though, and be consistent with my background, fonts, and so on. I had heard much praise about www.blogger.com, so I decided to check it out. Now up until today, I had thought they were just an online diary like the others I had seen, but to day I found that they could also provide exactly what I was looking for. You can set up your blog to automatically publish your entries to your own website, and automatically maintain archives. To get it exactly the way you want it does take a good bit of tinkering (well it does for someone like me anyway, who knows very little about HTML.) It took me from about 9am this morning until about 2pm to finally get everything working and configured exactly how I wanted it (again probably due to my extremely limited knowledge), however I now have pretty much exactly what I was looking for; an easy way to just type a post and click enter, and have it added to my own website and update the archives.

In short, I LOVE BLOG! Now I'm sure I'll find it's not perfect, but it's the damn coolest thing I've seen yet for anyone wanting to maintain a diary, or post random rants, raves, and thoughts on their own website. Even if you don't have your own website, you can still keep a public blog on www.blogger.com. Time will tell how I like the layout compared to some other sites, but for the moment, I'm quite filled with geeky joy.