A Free Soda?! This Is My Life We’re Talking About!

Another surprisingly short day of work led me to peruse Gawker when I read this briefly horrifying story. In the midst of the media gossip site cracking on an unbelievably awkward sentence on page six, they failed to grasp the substance of the news. Apologies to all that know of this story.

Allegedly, Dr. Pepper is promising everyone in America a free soda if Axl Rose releases his long-awaited Guns ‘N Roses masterpiece, Chinese Democracy. You know, that album 18 years in the making that is has men all across America over the age of 25 that still believe Guns “N Roses is still a relevant band foaming at the mouth. Waiting. Hoping, Praying. Thinking that this will be the rock album to end all rock albums.

Now, I am a fan of the band’s work from back in the day. I was a young lad many moons ago when “Appetite For Destruction” came out. I had the cassette. I listen to all two and a half of their albums all the time. When I want to bring down the house at karaoke, I always go to “Mr. Brownstone”. Really, gentlemen, this band takes me back to my youth like no one else, just like many of you.

But I got tired of seeing so many of my friends genuinely believing that Chinese Democracy would actually come out and rock order would be restored to the universe. For me, the dream died when I saw Axl Rose come out with Buckethead at the MTV Video Music Awards a while ago. This led me to make one of the most regrettable decisions of my life.

At New Finnerty’s in Manhattan, I heard this hopeful chatter from my pals, and I stood up and said: “Chinese Democracy is never coming out! If Chinese Democracy comes out, I will marry Alice!”

Yeah, that Alice. She appears to have taken this threat seriously, and appears frighteningly willing to go along with this.

Needless to say, I now have beef with Dr. Pepper.

Unless it’s some sort of hoax, which I am pretty sure that it is. (Because I have no choice but to believe that. )

If You Ain’t First, You’re Last

Of course, I had to go by Arrow for Triviotic, East Village Idiot’s brand new trivia night sensation that’s sweeping the nation. Well, not yet, but I’ll cross my fingers that it does well. Anyway, our team finished second to some band of chumps called “In Kwotes”.

(Yes, I am openly trash-talking after a loss. I mean, if you learn nothing else from the NBA, right? I kid!)

For winning second place, we won a copy of Heavy Duty Trucking Magazine. Yeah, contain your excitement. This is clearly not one of the titles they’d be rumormongering about on Gawker. Still, it’s a prize, and it’s free, so I took it home. Here’s an online taste of this fabulous second prize.

So, what did I learn from this publication while waiting for the L train? (They are still persisting with this “service on one track after midnight” thing, even though I never see any work being done on the other one.)

• Debris from failed tires is really hurting the image of the trucking industry.
• Jack Schenendorf says that ‘Failure to act would be catastrophic to this nation’, apparently about the infrastructure of our interstates. Excuse me if I am not quite as worked up about it.
• Even conservative icon Paul Weyrich believes that raising taxes a little bit is necessary to keep the roads in shape.
• Our Transportation Secretary is named Mary Peters.
• These aggressive road salts are no joke. Corrosion needs to be stopped in its tracks.
• Some of the readers think the issue of driver fatigue is not getting nearly enough coverage.

Fascinating, huh. I learned so much about trucking, I’m inclined to go over to Layover.com, the online trucking social network, so I can chat about these issues. Okay, not really.

But as we tried to spin our second-place finish last week, “If you’re not trucking, you’re sucking!” I can’t wait for next week, when second-place will apparently be a copy of “Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Weekly” and a free subscription to their podcast, “Hot Air.” If you show up next Monday, play to win!