I don’t have much cancery updates. I went to the doctor two weeks ago and got my oil checked. He said all my values are in the green even my liver values. That immediately called for some heavy partying over the long weekend because it just didn’t feel right for a McLaughlin to have normal liver values. I have another oil check coming up then my final full vehicle inspection on December 30th. The full inspection includes blood work and a Pet Scan. Don’t worry no one is scanning Leroy Brown. If they did all they will find there is an abundance of assholery wrapped in adorable to throw you off. It’s some type of fancy scan of my body to see how my bones are doing and to look at my organs. Once they do the scan and check me out I will be free to do follow ups back in the great state of New Hampshire.

The doc also told me that my 100 days isn’t really the end date. Apparently I still got to avoid crowds until six months. They say the immune system bounces back between 3-6 months and there is no way of checking where a person’s immune system is at. So I can return to work in Jan as long as I avoid sick people, but no plane rides or concerts until March. Coincidentally St Patty’s day is in March and I plan to take the day to celebrate my freedom with my people. Or whoever happens to show up at the Manchester bars and breweries.

Other then that the Doc told me to “Hit the treadmill fatty”. So now I am doing 20 minutes a day on the stupid machine. It’s boring as all hell but helping build up the stamina for the pub crawls.

In case any of you doubt my dedication to this blog and your entertainment I wanted to let you know that I was NOT kidding about growing the douchiess of all mustache soul patch combos. I am not there yet but like winter, it is coming. When someone recently asked my wife what she thought she said “I am just trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

Since there isn’t much cancer talk to be had I decided to entertain you ingrates with a top ten list! The top 10 albums of my youth. (1990-2000). This list is not in any order getting it down to ten is hard enough without ranking the ten. Speaking of ten without further ado the first album on the list is Ten by Pearl Jam. Before I heard Evenflow I was basically listening to my Dad’s music collection. Lots of The Who, The Doors, Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. My sister’s boyfriend played Evenflow for me and I was hooked. Do I have any idea what Eddie is saying… Nope. If I did is it likely to make any sense .. Nope. But that’s not the point.

Following right on that was Core by Stone Temple Pilots. This is still one of my all time favorite acoustic performances.

The Blue Album by Weezer. This was my favorite band in High School. They weren’t cool, they just made good music about being a geek. For some reason I’ve never figured out that related to me.

Green Day – Dookie. The return of punk to mainstream. Sure there older bands that played punk but for a lot of people me include Longview was our first exposure to punk and I liked it. I liked it alot! It helped that once I started learning guitar these songs required two chord shapes total.

Punk inevitably leads to Ska. Sublime’s self titled Album was arguably the biggest of that time. Sure people point to Nevermind as changing music and they are probably right. Everybody had this Sublime Album though. The kids who liked rap, rock, punk, old people. (you know people in their mid-thirties) all liked Sublime. This is the kind of Album you can toss on in a car with a bunch of random people and everyone’s happy. Even Leroy likes this album and Leroy is an asshole.

Jar of flies – Alice in Chains. Everyone was going full Nirvana at the time of it’s release. Screaming mumbles with guitars loud and proud. Everything got to be super heavy and then out of no where, one of these Seattle “Grunge” bands drops an Album with a ton of gorgeous acoustic guitar work. Green Day’s Dookie got me playing two chord punk tunes with bad timing. Jar of flies taught me how to play some basic chords reasonably well. For all you readers of past generations who don’t like any of the above music and are just hanging in there for the Leroy pics click on the song below. I promise you will enjoy it.

Ok speaking of past generations who won’t like a lot of this music brace yourself because you really aren’t going to like the next pick. Dr. Dre The Chronic. First off, the link below contains very bad language. This is another “Don’t play on your cube speakers” situation. There wasn’t anyone I knew my age who didn’t love this album. People who hated rap and thought they were too much of a Grunge/Rock person was secretly going home and listening to this.

The Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream. This album just had a different feel from everything out there. Billy Corgan really came out with his own sound. A front man with the charisma of a rusty nail pushed through your foot. He was infinitely unlikable for good reason. This record was great from start finish though.

Pavement – Shady Lane Loved this whole record. It’s strange and totally different from everything out at that time.

Last but in no way least. Rage Against the machine. 180 from Pavement’s soft hooks Rage was something you couldn’t put into any of the ready to made buckets of music. Was it rap, rock, heavy metal? I still don’t know and I don’t care. They were amazing, if you needed motivation music to run, or lift up and put down heavy things, rage will help you. (pun not intended).

So that’s my list. Yep Nevermind didn’t make it on there. I liked Nirvana but didn’t love them. I also couldn’t squeeze Soundgarden on there even though I loved Superunknown and think Chris Cornell was the best vocalist of our generation. So there it is my first top ten list of the blog. Hopefully things stay quiet on the cancer front and we can do more top ten lists and random ramblings of my disturbed mind.

If anyone wants more detailed information or to donate to research for Multiple Myeloma here is a link to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. These are the people who are most likely to find a cure. Which means no more blueberry muffins on Tuesday, but also no more shots and drugs that make demon babies. The muffins are good, but not that good.