Toys for Tots

Toys and BEER!

So last night we went to a charity concert for Toys for Tots at the Bluebird here in Bloomington. You could make a donation but ideally you were supposed to bring a new, unwrapped toy.

The roommate and I brought a couple of shiny Spiderman 3 action figures; a Venom (with action web!) and a New Goblin (with Goblin Bomb attack!) respectively.

They apparently got quite a haul of toys by the end of the night, which is a good thing, obviously.

The show was sponsored by the indie radio station, WTTS, which had done another holiday charity show in Indy a few days before for another charity. They do seem to know how to put on a show, which is supposedly one of their specialties.   

They're the only damn rock station in Indiana that I know of worth listening to, for that matter.

There were three bands at this show: American Bang, Autovaughn, and VHS or Beta. American Bang was your typical bar-rock group and were the warmup act.

Autovaughn has been described as a sort of indie-punk band; I don't know if that's true, but they're definitely good, and utterly fantastic live. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone put more energy into a live performance. We picked up a copy of their cd and I'm listening to it at the moment, as a matter of fact.  (Don't be fooled by their ridiculously ugly My Space page.  They just need to hire a good web dev)

VHS or Beta was supposed to be the big act, and indeed a lot of people showed up for them. They just weren't that hot, to my mind, though. It was very sort of bland, electronic music, with some ridiculously long instrumental pieces in the middle of songs. Quite a few people left to offset those who had showed up just to do the raver dancing.

I'm not trying to diss them, they seem like very nice guys and they were doing this for a good cause. Just giving an honest opinion. They definitely tried hard and had a lot of the crowd with them all the way, so if that's your sort of thing, then they'd make a good show. It's just not mine.

Oh, and as for the BEER above the cut. The roommate and I each had a Guinness. I nursed it for about four hours. Then I DROVE HOME. GASP.

I've probably gotten higher blood alcohol from eating my homemade stroganoff (which uses quite a bit of wine).

The bar had a handy chart, actually, with your body mass on the x-axis, number of drinks on the y, and ranges showing how safe you'd be to drive and such. That is a neat chart. I'd like to own one.

Guinnness is pretty good, actually. It might just be that I've developed a taste for bitter stuff lately thanks to the grapefruit juice, but I could get behind an occasional beer of that sort.

Well, off to get on with the day's work. Hopefully some little boy or girl will be beating up a Spiderman action figure with one of our villains by the end of the month. Peter Parker must suffer, in all his incarnations, after all.

He's like Jesus that way.