ThinkSoJoE's Thoughts

 It's been a while since I've posted on thinksojoe.com, so I figure the first post back should be a good one.  So, I'm officially announcing right here on my official site that Lost Elysium guitarist Brian Lee Muller and I are planning to record an EP of acoustic covers of 1950's Rock & Roll songs.  Brian is picking two songs, I'm picking two songs, and we're going to let you, the fans, vote on the 5th song.

The first two songs have officially been chosen, and they are Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues," and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."  Stay tuned to my official Facebook page for the other two song selections, and details on how you can help choose the 5th song.

I'm a public figure, of sorts, so of course I plug my twitter and facebook pages on a regular basis.  One thing I don't do, however, is pander to celebrities to follow me, retweet me, or anything else.  Yet over the past three days, I've been favorited, replied to, and followed by both a WWE Superstar and a major label recording artist.

I always laugh when I see people begging celebs for a retweet on Twitter.  Some of them will come up with stories in hopes to sway the celeb into retweeting them, others will just tweet, "Hey, @celebrity, can I get a RT?"  Surprisingly, this actually works with a few of them, which is why I know about this phenomenon.  Hulk Hogan is a notorious retweeter, but I've gotten replies from the guy just by asking how he's doing, or talking with others about the time I met him in 2002.  If any of the thousands of projects I try my hand at take off, I doubt I'd retweet anyone unless I genuinely like their tweet (with the exception being if it's for a good cause).

So how did I wind up with a WWE Superstar and a national recording artist following me on Twitter?  By calling them out, surprisingly.

The WWE Superstar in question is Tyson Kidd.  When WWE was in Buffalo about a month ago, Tyson was on their new kid's show, Saturday Morning Slam.  I got a screen grab of Tyson leaving me hanging as I'm reaching for a high-five, and I called him out on it on Twitter.  "My bad, I'll get ya next time," Kidd says.  I told him I'd hold him to that - and next thing I know he's following me on Twitter.

The band in question is New Years Day.  Ash Costello (the singer) and Russell Dixon (the drummer) walked into my hotel yesterday morning.  Me, being clueless as to who they were at the time, cut them a break on my usual early check-in fee, thinking they were some indy band trying to get their name out there.  Come to find out, they've been around for quite a while, and have nearly 43,000 fans on Facebook.  Last night, I got a noise complaint from an elderly lady who happened to have been put next door to them.  After I called them to tell them to knock it off, I found them on twitter to joke about having to tell them to be quiet.  They tweeted back that they were sorry for partying and then followed me.

No pandering.  Just friendly conversation.

FWIW, New Years Day has a new EP available, called The Mechanical Heart.  Check it out!

 Ah yes, it's once again the weekend!  Far away from the evil that is my "day job" (that, incidentally, I do at night), and looking forward to working on stuff that I want to do.  Here's a look at my next two days.

First up, tonight, Jorge and I are heading to Tonawanda, where we will be auditioning a new drummer for thinksobrain.  It's been over TWO YEARS since the last time Jorge and I played music together.  It looked like that may have been the end for the band that earned me my nickname, but lo and behold, we're taking another shot at it.  Hopefully this dude will work out, he seems like a cool guy.  Plus, my kid is friends with his kids, so that's a plus.

Tomorrow, I'm reuniting with another old group of friends, and we're heading out to a place here called LASERTRON.  It's an old hangout for us.  We used to go there all the time together growing up.  Very much looking forward to that, we don't get a lot of time to hang out with each other anymore.

Meanwhile, I'm working on booking an interview with a former TNA star for BoredWrestlingFan.  It's actually a guy I saw back in his indie days in Western New York. and Southern Ontario.

While I'm doing all of that, my mind is trying to decide what I want to cook this weekend.  Somehow my brain got stuck on wanting to bake cookies.  I have no idea why.  I do know that I want to make homemade mac & cheese, for the sole purpose of making grilled mac & cheese sandwiches.  I heard about that somewhere before and thought it was an awesome idea.  So, I'm going to do it myself.  Maybe another pie too?  I don't know.

The only thing I know is "go."  Should be a fun weekend.  Hope everybody else's is as well!

By the way, you can now like me on facebook!

Hey everybody!  No crazy stories about burning myself taking garlic bread out of the oven today!

As I prepare to put together a new lineup and get thinksobrain back out in the music scene, I decided that I'd like to have a place for everybody to see what's going on with me while I promote stuff - other than this website.  If only because nobody really COMES to this website.  Well, here's the deal.

As of this morning, I have an official facebook page.  Links to all future articles posted here at thinksojoe.com will automatically pop up in the timeline on the page, and I will post there regularly when I have things going on that I want people to know about.  Please head over there and "like" me!

Almost immediately after I posted the blog about the foods I've cooked the other day,  I burnt the hell out of my finger taking food out of the oven.  What culinary delight was I preparing when this injury occurred?  I was taking store bought garlic bread out of the oven.  Yes, after all the homemade stuff I've made in the oven over the past 5 months, it's store bought garlic bread that causes me my first injury.  My finger missed the potholder and got the oven rack instead.

And because I have absolutely zero discipline, I picked at the resulting blister and now have a hole in my finger and have to wear a band-aid most of the time, if only because it looks bad.  Anyways, on to the point of this.

As many of you may know, I launched a second website in the "Bored Fanchise" series of sites.  This time, it's BoredHockeyFan.com.  It didn't take me long to score an interview for the new site.  Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Sylvester, who is the host of Buffalo Sabres television, and the host of Hockey Hotline on WGR 550 AM here in Buffalo.  We had a great chat about the direct effects of the NHL lockout on people involved in the business of hockey, outside of the players and owners.  If you haven't checked it out yet, please do!  Hopefully this is just the beginning of great things to come on BHF!