Vacation 1

I took a vacation, which obviously included posting to this blog. I may write a few vacation posts eventually. Right now I have only one which I wrote before I became completely lazy. Here it is:

Vacation (post written 7/16)
For a bunch of great and stupid reasons, I decided to fly to JFK, rent a car, and drive to Boston. It's been a good choice so far. In order to justify flying to NYC, I had to stop somewhere before driving out. Flushing Meadows Park was an appropriate and convenient place to go. I parked by Meadow Lake which wasn't super close to the Unisphere which is the reason why I stopped, but the hour or so spent walking to it and back was a good break between the flight and the drive ahead. As I walked North from my parking spot, the first thing I noticed was how everyone is playing that sport that is all the rage now--Cricket!!! I must've walked by three or four matches/games/whatever they're called. I don't know what the rules are but apparently this is the place to play it. Everyone wears white shirts and white pants. And apparently the cricket balls (whatever you call 'em) aren't worth TOO much because I walked past someone who drove a sorta "home-run" (or whatever) which ended up in a huge puddle that the fielder (or whatever) wasn't willing to get his white pants dirty enough to retrieve.

The Unisphere is cool! I bet it looks even better at night. It's hard to see how the rings around the planet are attached in the daylight so it must be really great when you can't see the wires. The area below the sphere is meant to be filled with water, but they must've stopped doing that awhile ago. It is now taken over by skateborders and little kids running around. So, you can get under the sphere if you like. Maybe I will do that if I go back.

I wonder how the MIB writers turned the saucer shaped things at the NY Exhibit into UFOs, because its really a stretch looking at the state they're in now.

The most heartwarming site was the mother helping her two daughters on bicycles up the LI Expy overpass as I was walking back to my car. She pushed the younger one as she pedaled up to the peak, then let that daughter go on by herself down the other side as she ran back to help the older one who was just barely riding side to side instead of up the incline. She gave the older daughter a push up to the top and then of course had to keep on running to yell directions to the younger one who was now quite aways ahead. The mother ran the entire time. That must've been quite a workout but I bet she does it all the time.

Tale of Two Gigs

Quite by accident, I ended up seeing two good bands in the last two days. The first was at a neighborhood bar in Santa Clara. The bar’s name had changed since the last time I was there a month or two ago, and Wednesday night has turned into Jazz night. It was quite a switch from the last time I was there when it was karaoke night and the place was filled with the local college crowd. Not being one to actively seek out jazz, it was refreshing to enjoy something different. The band members were all young, probably college age or slightly older. The guitar player reminded me of the guitar player in my jazz ensemble in high school, the way his improvisations were all over the place and sounded great, leaving me puzzled as to how he did it. And I think he was playing a Les Paul. The keyboard player reminded me a bit of myself because his solo technique sounded a lot like what I would do—fairly simple and predictable chords, runs, intervals, etc.

The second was at Lovejoy’s last night, where I stopped after my flight back from California. Lovejoy’s usually has bands on Thursday, but they are usually just very loud, or very weird, and not anything that would impress me. I was all set to really hate this band because they were mic checking “check 1 2” for what seemed like an hour and caused a few annoying feedbacks in the process. The demographics of the band (a bunch of older guys and a much younger chick) and a few interesting drum fills during set up made me curious enough to stick around, and I’m glad I did cause Eve Monsees and the Exiles were tight and sounded great. Eve was really expressive in her guitar playing and stage presence so it was a great time.

No! Dinner!

Yah--so instead of the usual "I'm feeling like I'm actually getting stuff done and finally making some progress, etc." that I get from these trips to CA, I'm more of the "everyone I work with is stupid, why am I wasting my life with this BS" kind of attitude. I blew off a vendor-mandated "let us buy your team an exotic dinner since you're paying us all this money anyway, oh, but we won't let you know until the last minute because of course you couldn't possibly have made other plans so why should that make any difference." This I will pay dearly for tomorrow with a lot of public "so where were you last night?" statements and probably a lot of private "why doesn't he want to spend EVEN MORE TIME with us after work?" thoughts.

For the record, I did my own thing tonight which did involve leaving the hotel room and having interesting conversations with people I've never met. I'm sure I had a better time than having some better than average Indian food and talking about work.

My vacation starts after work on Friday.

Tale of Two Gigs

Unfortunately, Friday turned out much as I feared. We were hired for an older people's "dance club," and we apparently played too loud and too fast as we were repeatedly asked to turn down and play slower tunes. We weren't the most appropriate band for our audience, but they should have known better--whoever hired us had perused our set-lists and said they were fine. Their lack of enthusiasm combined with the inconvenient location and meager pay made this one of the suckiest gigs we've ever done. And I had to miss the Mad Cowboys too.

Saturday was unexpectedly a lot better. While we were playing at the same old place we always play, the crowd was more into it than usual, and their repeated demands for more cowbell caused me during one song to tour the whole place while playing it, which I haven't done in a long time.

Gigs

I've been a little worried about my gig tonight because I don't know what kind of a crowd we'll be playing for, what kind of event it is, what the location is like, etc. So I just hope our regular old set of stuff is appropriate enough for whoever they are. Tomorrow night's gig will be fine, it's at Mulligan's and we know what to expect.

I'm supposed to be done at 11 tonight, but it is a bit out of town. So, there might be a little time to wander out after that if I'm not too tired.

Baseball

I almost feel guilty for liking baseball somewhat now, instead of hating it like I usually do. How did this happen? Is it because I had a good time watching Bonds hit a home run at AT&T Park a few months ago? Is it because I enjoyed watching the Astros win tonight off a homerun in the 13th inning? Is it because the Brewers are at the top of their division and the Astros and the Pirates are duking it out for second to last place? I don't know, but I may have to finally get to Fenway this month when I'm up there.