Here is what I know about Neil Peart without Googling: he plays the drums for Rush. Rush may or may not be a Canadian band. They also may or may not have sung a song called Tom Sawyer. Rush has a lot of fans. Many, many rabid fans who get so excited about his drum kit that they started a fan page (or group or whatever Facebook is calling such things this month) dedicated to Chromey that chronicles Chromey’s appearances. Yes, Chromey tours.

That’s one thing that Chromey’s got on this Chromey. I rarely leave the house.

At this point you have probably gathered that being a Chromey, myself, I had to join the group or like the page or circle yes on the note it passed to me in Algebra. As far as I know I’m the only Chromey who is also a fan of Chromey. This makes me disappointed in all the other Chromeys (and there are a crapton of them. I have a gazillion cousins and they all have two kids and those kids have kids).

I can’t remember when I became a fan of Chromey (well the second time, the first time would have been when I was four and asked if I could have it for my last name, which had nothing at all to do with Rush). In fact, I probably liked it and promptly forgot it, such is the way with Facebook likedom.

But today, in the middle of a snowy, dreary Monday I got an email with the subject: “CHROMEY” sent you a message on Facebook. I was all, huh, which one of my doofy (and as you now know disappointing) cousins has taken the singular name for him or herself. But it was not from one of my name-hogging cousins. No, it was a message about some autographed drum heads that were played on Chromey in 1977. Apparently these are going to be up on eBay soon.

The message was so exclamation point riddled and filled with excitement that I got a contact adrenaline rush (rush, ha!). And being an official, card-carrying Westernerd, it makes me happy that there are other nerdy, goofy, rabid fans out there.

The post This is what I love about the Internet today: A fanpage for a drum kit appeared first on I Will Dare.

This is some of the advice I left for my friends Scooter and Anna at their wedding last night. Being that I was the only single person over the age of 8 in the joint, I thought I’d be better offdispatching wise words to live by for people of any sort of couple-status and not just love advice for newlyweds.

I gotta say it was a little tough being the odd wheel. Generally it doesn’t bother me, but when we sat down to dinner the servers had a hard time dealing with the empty seat next to me. It kind of freaked them out. Perhaps they’ve never seen an Old Maid before. I am not sure what their problem was but before serving each course they had to ask and ask and ask again if the chair was empty. In their defense they did have a pretty cool synchronized serving technique reminiscent of Top Chef, but still.

The empty spot flustered them so much during the salad course that they just placed a salad in front of the empty chair because they didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to die. When you go to a wedding solo you are already acutely aware of your singlehood, having the servers repeatedly point it out to a table full of people, over half of whom you don’t know, just makes it all the worse.

Thankfully I drank enough to smooth over those feelings of odd-duckness and unworthiness to make it back to my larger group of friends in one emotional piece (there were nine of us and we had to bust into three different groups at dinner) and had a complete blast snarking and watching the cutie-pa-tootie rockabilly band.

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Anyway, even in the midst of a hormonal storms there are moments of sheer fun. Over at the Paul Westerberg blog, the Westernerds are determining which is the best ‘Mats album. It’s down to “Let it Be” and “Tim” which should come as a surprise to nobody. Of course trying to choose which album is better is like choosing between The Beatles and The Stones — in other words a decision that cannot be made and that just thinking about causes your brain to melt and run out your nose.

I am firmly in the “Let it Be” camp for reasons that include “I Will Dare,” “Answering Machine,” and the delightful absence of any bullshit like “Dose of Thunder.” So far, my record is winning.

The post Cranky goes to the polls appeared first on I Will Dare.

So then Some Guy came up with the brilliant idea to pit all the ‘Mats albums and all the solo albums in a sort of March-Madnessesque bracket thing complete with polls.

It’s really about 1000% cooler than I made it sound. But you can vote. It’s fun. You should vote and talk some trash, because that’s what I’m gonna do.

The post Now this is a bracket I can get behind, determining the best ‘Mats album appeared first on I Will Dare.

Wolfdogg: The nicollet island inn looks nice
Jodi: is that the closest?
Wolfdogg: yeah. but it only has 24 rooms total
Wolfdogg: http://www.nicolletislandinn.com/
Jodi: we are not staying at a hotel with romance as a nav option on their web site. do you want me to hang myself from the balcony?

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