Alright, this is too funny not to post here. My buddy Pat from the OAR message board has been writing bios for other members of the board, based on some facts and making up the rest. Well after much demand he started working on my bio and is releasing it in phases. This is the first part of my own biography…

The Legend of Ed Paff Jr. (abridged from the full legend of Ed Paff Jr, later re-named The Odyssey written by Homer)

Forward: Throughout the ages, very few men have attained the status of Hero. Fewer still could be called Legends. Only one man, Ed Paff Jr. has the ability to not only be a legend, but to be worshipped as a new God. One day children will kneel before the statue of the man called Ed and praise the name of Paff, drinker of alcohol, loser of shoes, and collector of girls whose names begin with the letter K. Mostly, however, he will ever be known as The Creator?of oarsa.org, the Bible for all who listen to the band OAR. Long after Ed ascends on his flaming chariot into the heaven reserved only for the truly gifted, his work, oarsa, will continue to be available as the resource for all things OAR. God Bless Ed Paff Jr., you say? Oh, he already has my friend.

THE LEGEND OF ED PAFF JR.

Ed Paff Jr. was born to rocket scientist Ed Paff Sr. and Claire Paff on March 24th 1980. He was born how most geniuses are born: ugly as sin. He actually won the ?ugliest baby in Alabama? contest in 1981, and if you?ve ever been to Alabama, you know that?s no easy feat. It was later found that by a miraculous feat of nature, Claire?s breasts were not pumping milk, but rather Bailey?s Irish Cream. Once the problem was remedied, and he was on the bottle, he became much more normal looking, more active, and he no longer had such a hard time developing words. It was the only point in Ed?s life that hitting the bottle had these results.

As Ed grew up, his family decided to move from Huntsville, Alabama to Cincinnati, OH. Whether it was his dad?s hankering for chili, or the fact that Cincy was the headquarters for Hustler Magazine, the Paff family was heading for the town with the greatest motto in America. ?Cincinnati: Its like Kentucky, only its not?.

Although young Ed had a hard time adjusting to school at first, he found that the fumes from the local refinery calmed his nerves significantly. The teacher liked that it caused a stall in his hyperactivity, so with an open window and a happy heart, Ed Paff Jr., slightly buzzed, got his education at Archbishop Moeller High School, which was known for 2 things: Its winning football team and its sign that proudly announced ?No Molestings in 472 days.? (changed daily, of course)

One day while Ed was walking school, he noticed a sign that said ?Special Ed?. ?Well, shucks,? he thought ?I must be one popular guys to get my own room.? And in he went. Only when his fifth period teacher noticed that Ed was late for his home economics class (he made the best strudel in the entire class) that the situation was remedied. When Ed later explained what had happened, there were discussions about letting him stay.

During this time, Ed developed a love for the sport of hockey. Coming from Huntsville, Alabama, the ?hockey capital of the south?, he became interested in skating on the many frozen lakes in Alabama?s blustery winter nights. After almost drowning twice, Ed also decided to take swimming lessons. This helped make his transition to Cincinnati ?The swimming capital of Southern Ohio? that much easier. Ed loved to prance and twirl upon the ice, making figure eights and doing triple axles to impress his friends. After getting beat up several times, he stopped with the triple axles but found that the figure eights were still ok, as long as he said he was actually making boobs on the ice.

Also during this time, Ed joined a Pastoral Ministry program. Although not a highly religious person, Ed grew spiritually through this. So much so, that he actually became a minister with the Universal Life Church. Though the minutes it took to fill out his internet form were grueling, Ed was rewarded one hour later when he was contacted via email. He was now The Reverend Ed Paff Jr., and could officially start his own church. He played around with artsy names for his church like Over A Rainbow Stands Allah and On A River, Satan Asphyxiates, but none of them really clicked, so he shelved starting his own church for the time being to concentrate on his hobbies and school.

Finally the day came: Ed Paff Jr. graduated from high school in 1998, and decided, following Jesus? example, to pick a life of danger, pain and poverty. And so he enrolled at The University of Cincinnati. Ed?s grades had miraculously picked up by that time, and he was able to get into the college of Engineering, where he labored for 5 years to get his degree, only to never use it in a real life situation. Degree in Engineering? F**k that, he decided to sling sausage while the slinging was good, and he?s a better man for it. But I?m getting ahead of myself.

Part 2 Coming Soon…

Pretty good isn’t he? Yeah he has a major in English from Ohio State and is currently cookin’ burgers for a living. :) I told him that this could be the start of his career. Here is a link to the thread on the board…

Anyway, Kim and I are driving back to Cincinnati tonight. Hopefully we have a fun weekend and get to see everyone once again. Have a great and safe memorial day weekend…

Kim couldn’t wait any longer, so we joined Woodside last night. You can check it out online at www.clubwoodside.com. I think we may meet up with Doni and Phil tonight for some workin’ out…

The Pig-Fest evites have gone out. Hopefully you can join us for a wonderful time! (Let me know if you somehow didn’t get an evite, and we will fix it.)

It looks like we are going to join that gym, but we have to wait until we get paid to have the money required to join…

Nothing too exciting has been going on lately, just a bunch of work, even when I’m at home…

The Heart Of America Shakespeare Festival is coming up soon. Kim went once last year and said it was a good time. The park where this is held is right down the street from our place, so I bet we go a few times. Looks like the play is Julius Caesar, so I’ll have to research it a little bit, so I’m not clueless when we see it. The map on the site show where we live in relation to all these places I constantly talk about. I’ve copied it below so that you can see it without going to the site. The festival goes on in Southmoreland Park as you can see on the map. 46th street is just to the left (east) of the park and we live half way down the street where another road interests from the north. You can see Mill Creek Park on the map, which is where we do all of our running. Also just past that is the Country Club Plaza where all the restaurants and shopping is. We have also visited the KC Art Institute (Kemper Museum) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum…

I must have forgotten to post today with all the excitement of tornadoes coming our way. During the morning commute the weather guy on the radio was saying that we could have tornadic weather starting at 2 pm in the days. I watched it throughout the day and it seemed that the storm would arrive a little later than he said. I decided if I left work at 5 I could make it home without hitting the storm. I made it and Kim decided we should go for a run!!! I think she is nuts. :) Somehow she won and we went out for a quick 2 mile run. We got back had dinner and the storms started. They started reporting tornadoes just to the west of us in Lawrence and other areas. We watched it closely, but the tornadoes all died before getting in our area. We were given a few minutes of intense rain and lightning and then in the end had an impressive lightning storm. They are still issuing tornado warning all around us, but I think it has all passed finally…

Anyway, the weekend was great. Friday I met up with everyone a little late at the Brooksider. Most of the happy hour crew stuck around until 9 or so, but I decided that hang around and just take the bus home. I had a great time with Susan and her work friends, and just barely caught the last bus home.
Saturday I met up with Todd at the Harlings to see Mama Ray, who is an old Jazz/Blues singer. She has a solid band behind her and even some guests every time. I stayed there until it was time to get Kim from the airport, thus ending guy week. :) We decided to meet up with everyone at Kelly’s in Westport. Good times for the rest of the night, highlighted with the multiple bachelorette parties that were going on at Harpo’s. I have some pictures that I’ll have to get up once my battery is charged again…
Sunday we did the normal errands that we always do, and topped it all off with the Soprano’s party over at Susan’s. We ate some Chinese from one of those carryout places. I didn’t really care for it all that much, but most of you know how picky I can be. I do however like the Asian food that we have been making at home. Good stuff, lots of spice!

Kim and I are considering joining a gym that Doni and Phil joined. It’s called Woodside is just over a mile from our place, which is really nice. We could run there and then take a dip in one of their many pools. They have all of the cardio equipment and weights, along with a bunch of tennis courts. Can you picture me out there playing tennis? Hahaha, should be funny. Kim is really thinking that we join, so we probably will end up going there on a regular basis. I do like it much more than the YMCA that we tried to get in at before…

My mom was worried about me since I didn’t post in here all week. I got an email and everything. :)

Anyway, if you couldn’t tell I’ve been keeping super busy in Kim’s absence. Of course there is work, which is never fun, but after that is all done I’ve either been working hard on oarsa.org v2.0 (which I’m happy to say is looking really nice) or I’ve been going out to the bars with the guys. That pretty much has left me with no time to sit around or run, haha. I actually thought about running last night, but that was as far as that got. I’ll just wait until Kim gets back to make me go. :)

Tickets for 311 and The Roots go on sale today at 3:11 PM (how cute) and I’m going to pick up a couple seats. That is one heck of a lineup, if only you could tape…

Tonight I’m gonna try to make it to the Brooksider for happy hour, and then I’m not really sure what else to do. I’ll just play it by ear…

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Well Friday Kim and I headed off to Cincinnati. We were flying delta so that we could go directly there, but we always end up getting delayed on delta. They board everyone on the plane and then say that we are overweight, so they had to kick 3 people off the plane. We did eventually get to Cincy, and were able to easily rent a car. We headed downtown to the Hyatt to check in to our hotel. I got the room for $35 using biddingfortravel and priceline. We quickly got ready and met up with Liam, Fighty and Reif. From there we walked in the rain down to the show. We were just in time to get some beer before it was cut off at 10:45 (an hour and 15 minutes before the show would end). We then headed over to see Howie Day. I haven’t see him in a long time, and haven’t really had a desire to do so. He has been playing with a full band and that just ruins his old sound in my opinion. The good thing about this show was that it was just Howie solo, like it used to be. I was still unimpressed with most of the show though. After seeing Keller Williams a few times, I don’t find Howie’s looping skills to be all that great as I did before. I enjoyed some of the older songs that I heard so many times before but overall I doubt I’ll see him again anytime soon. After that we went to the hotel bar for a drink and went to bed…

Saturday we heading to the Hais’ household. It is always fun hanging out over there! I saw a few cicadas, but that was just because Kim’s brothers were out hunting them for bait. I bet they will be really bad when I got back to Cincy in a couple weeks. I also visited my mom and brothers. We took Tim with us back to Jammin On Main. We had a few rounds of beers in the hotel bar and headed to the show. Right as we were walking in Marc Broussard started his set. Good little show from Marc and the band. I think they gained some new fans for sure. We then spent the rest of the night running into old friends. I heard a few tunes from both G Love and the Offspring. We headed out to a bar downtown but didn’t stay very long.

Sunday I had LaRosa’s pizza! Man I have missed that place. Kim and I went to a few soccer games, and then headed back to the Hais’ for Amy’s birthday bash. We got to play some cornhole, although Chip and Chris killed me and Kim. We’ll get them next time…
I then had to head to the airport for my flight home. Before leaving I was making jokes about the plane being overbooked and that I would have to stay another night, etc. Well I get to the gate and the flight actually was overbooked. They were offering $400 in vouchers plus hotel and meals for switching to the first flight out Monday morning. I couldn’t refuse this offer, so I am now back in KC $400 richer than before!
Kim is in Ohio for the whole week, so I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to get work done as well as time to get out with the guys!

So after work last night we headed out to Lawrence. Todd thought about tagging along, but in the end decided he couldn’t “hang with us youngins.” We get to the venue around 7:30 expecting to pay $5 a person, but the guy at the door checked our ID’s and asked for $9 each. I hate when they do that, and it got worse when the show was supposed to start at 8:00 but they pushed it back to 9:00. I could tell that Kim wasn’t very happy with that at all, and she ended up leaving around 8:00 to go home. We did get her money back though! My buddy Tim Maus was at the show, and he offered to drive me home, so it worked out. The show eventually started at 9 with Dave Barnes. I was pretty impressed with this guy even though he only played for a little over half an hour. Pretty funny guy too. Pete Schmidt played next, and I really cannot get into him and his music. It isn’t bad, but it doesn’t do much for me, perhaps I am just growing tired of this singer songwriter genre. Tanner Walle played next with Mike and a couple of the other guys from his band. Good show as usual, and I’m excited to hear that they will be releasing a CD somewhat soon. Finally! :) Marc Broussard played last with a full band. Some of you may remember that the opened up for OAR when I followed their tour last spring break. Well when he opened it was just Marc and a bass player. I though the was really good then, and I’m happy to say that his show is even better now. The band really complimented his sound, and didn’t take anything away at all. The energy was on, and the new songs they played all sounded great. After the show I just told Marc that he played a good show. Immediately he recognized me and said didn’t you follow the OAR tour about a year ago, like the whole tour. Ah memories. We talked about that for a minute or two, and he said that he had seen Liam a few times since then. I told him that we would all be down at Jammin’ On Main, and he seemed excited to be playing there. Hopefully I get to see another excellent show this weekend!

We started running again last night. Before this I hadn’t run a mile since we did the trolley run. It was a much deserved break. :)

I also got a much needed haircut last night. Kim took a picture of me before hand with my fro, I’ll try and get that up here…

Tonight we are heading to Lawrence to see Broussard along with Tanner and a few other singer songwriters. Should be a kick ass show!

We are back from Vegas and poor. We didn’t gamble that much at all, it is just that everything is so expensive there. The pizza hut cheese pizza meal which costs between $4 and $5 normally was over $7 in Vegas. You can’t get a beer for under $5 on the strip, unless you are buying cases from the store. Even then it is expensive, probably 50% more than what it is here in KC. Most of our gambling was done at penny or nickel slot machines waiting for a waitress to come around so we can get free drinks. One time Kim did find about $14 in chips which we did gamble on the roulette table. We put $10 on black and it was black so all of the sudden we had $20. Pretty easy money huh? But that was about the only time we really gambled, and that was with money we found.

Recapping each of the nights:
Wednesday Phil and I got into Vegas about 7. We met up with the girls at our hotel, the Tropicana and soon headed out on the strip. We visited some of the nearby hotels and casinos. First stop was the MGM, and we immediately saw a feeding of their lions. We visited Paris, Ballys among a few others and called it a fairly early night.
Thursday we sat around the pool for the entire afternoon. I put sunscreen on everything but my legs apparently, and I got burnt on my shins pretty good. They are still fairly red today. In the evening we headed to downtown aka the old strip aka fremont street. Everything was much more economical in this area. We had 20+ ounce glasses of microbrew for cheaper than a bud light bottle on the strip. We visited a handful of the casinos here and stuck to the slot machines. We saw the disco version of the light show, which was pretty cool. I think that the next time I go to Vegas I will spend more time down here.
Friday we did more lounging around the pool. Then later in the evening we went to Luxor and then to Mandalay Bay. After some gambling at Mandalay Bay, we headed to the concert which was outside on the beach. Basically the beach is a large sandy area that connects to a fairly large wavepool and some very shallow standing areas in front of a highly elevated stage. The Gin Blossoms played first, and played about an hour long set. They started with a few of the radio songs to grab the crowds attention, followed that up with some new stuff, and then finished the set with 3 or 4 of their radio hits. Next up the Spin Doctors, who didn’t quite have as many radio hits. With this being said, I guess it is easy to understand why they only played for 45 minutes. They seriously must have played 6 songs total, but did so with tons of energy. They actually sounded really well. I guess I was just disappointed in the show based solely on the price of admission, but other than that it was a great show.
Saturday we took a tour of the Hoover Dam. That was quite a site to see, and I’m glad we did it. I’ll just have to get to the Grand Canyon next. After that Kim and I rushed all around town to see all of the free shows that we could. We had previously seen the volcano at the Mirage on Thursday. We walked all the way north to Treasure Island to see the pirate show. I was not very impressed with this show at all. There was way too much singing and dancing and not enough stunts. We then went and saw the Bellagio fountains which were set to Elton John’s “Your Song.” This was a pretty cool sight to see, as most people will probably tell you. After that we went back to Mandalay Bay to see PJ Loughran. This guy is good, that’s all there is to it really. We stayed until the end of his 3 sets, so Kim must have liked it too. Hopefully I can see him again sometime soon.
Sunday we went back to Mandalay Bay once again, this time to go to the aquarium there. They have the first and only hammerhead shark in captivity in the US. That was pretty cool to finally see (she hid from us for awhile). The aquarium itself was alright, but definitely not the best. For one the glass used is not seamless like others I have seen. I guess just like everything else in Vegas, I felt like it was overpriced. :)

Overall the trip was fun, just expensive but I knew it would be. I would like to go back again, and actually would want to stay longer. I felt rushed a bunch of the time, and there are still plenty of things I didn’t do. I really liked Mandalay Bay though, maybe I can stay there the next time I go. :)

Pictures will be coming soon, I know I have over 100 so be ready…

We had another night out last night, but not nearly as long. We had dinner and drinks at a new place called Lew’s while watching the Royals choke again. We then headed to Bobby Bakers for a “nightcap.” Pretty good night out!

I’m heading to Vegas today! I’ve been waiting for this for a little while now, and it’s finally here. Phil and I fly out at 6:30, and thanks to Todd we now have drink tickets to start of the vacation! I know we are going to that Spin Doctors and Gin Blossoms show, but not much else is planned. I do want to go see PJ Loughran at least once. I’ve really been getting into his music. I think I have read enough to play some craps while I’m there. Hopefully I don’t go broke! I shall be back on Sunday…