Happy Birthday Kemosabe!!!!

“The sensation you feel is the Quickening. We are one, MacLeod. We are brothers!” –Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez to Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod in Highlander (1986).

FanBoyWonder wishes to take a moment from our regular programming to commemorate the birthday of our best pal and all-around Kemosabe John Micek.

We will spare him the indignity of revealing his true age (“You’re like really old. You outta do something about that”—Beavis), but since Grandpa FanBoyWonder is exactly 2 months and 4 days his junior, we feel completely free to rag on our aging boy wonder pal-o-ours.

When not busy with his day job http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas or with his lovely wife and little girl, Kemosabe has actually managed to convince hordes of otherwise sane individuals (including FBW) that he indeed possesses musical talent.

So much so that a few years back, Kemosabe formed his own pop band, Milkshake Jones http://www.myspace.com/milkshakejones. Apropos of nothing whatsoever, Milkshake Jones’ new album—Gala Days—goes on sale this Tuesday. It’s MJ’s second album and John Micek’s third if you include his self-titled solo album from early in the decade.

We’ve heard an advanced copy of Gala Days and we are quite favorably impressed. In our humble opinion, we think Milkshake Jones can hold its own against anything in stores by the big boys. It’s worth a look for music lovers everywhere.

With his musical talent well established, we suppose that FanBoyWonder will have to settle with only being smarter, funnier, better looking and just plain more fun to be with than old birthday boy.

It’s been nearly 15 years since two fledgling reporters who would someday be FanBoyWonder and Kemosabe met in a once proud newsroom http://www.registercitizen.com/ in a small town at the edge of nowhere. Before we knew it we bonded.

As both life and career has propelled us both far beyond our small town newspaper secret origins, we’ve had our ups and downs over the years—including a break between us for a while in the middle until we learned how to forge a newer, stronger friendship.

We can say that having lived life both with and without Kemosabe, life is better with our best friend in it.

Happy Birthday John! Your “Old Friend”—Chuck.

UPDATE June 4: We've gotten word that the release date for Milkshake Jones' new album Gala Days has been pushed back until June 15. For purchase information, check out MJ's record label site at www.paisleypop.com.