Not in my wildest imagination did I anticipate a weekend so dominated by my new favorite sport... Beer Pong. We never did get tickets for the rain drenched Penn State/Iowa game and I think we ended up being the lucky ones in the end. It was a messy weekend, but still great to spend some time with family. My cousin not only introduced me to some great people, but they in turn introduced us to Beer Pong. I was surly aware of it's existence, but it wasn't in full rage during my college years and I had never played. I am now considering going back to school just to play more pong.
I only took about 40 pictures all weekend which is unusual for me. Every single one of them was taken around the Beer Pong table. Thanks to Jeff and Lisa for hosting us and Mugger's friends Freddy and Amy and their folks (Bill and Barbara) for sharing their hospitality and their new RV.
Earlier this summer I had a gatheringto commemorate my 40th birthday. We rented a place in western Pa next to a river and invited everyone I knew. We played beanbags, drank Yuenglings and sat around a campfire. It was everything I needed for a good ol' fashioned birthday blowout. I wasn't thinking too much about presents. In fact, I requested that in lieu of gifts I would prefer if the dudes grew mustaches. I figured it would be more entertaining and most obliged and it was in fact very funny. The women would not be excluded and brought their own mustaches.
I put together a slide show if you haven't seen it.
So I guess what I'm getting at is that a gift or present wasn't on my radar that day. I was more caught up with getting my itunes arranged and where to buy a half keg of Yuengling deep in the hollers of Western PA...and would a half keg be enough...
I think that is why this gift from my family was all the more special. My immediate family chipped in and purchased a VIP package for Kristen and I to see U2 in Boston. Previous to this weekend I had been chirping off that U2 had for some reason bypassed Philadelphia on the first leg of their new tour. Kristen was on pins and needles for a couple weeks prior just hoping that I wouldn't get it in my head to road trip to see U2.
The gift was a tremendous surprise. Didn't see it coming. Not even close. The party and the actual Boston road trip were great bookends to the summer. I could get used to the VIP treatment at the big shows. Parking 50 yards from the entrance and not having to pay the $40 fee was our first indication that we were in for a very pleasant day. In addition to being only 18 rows back and having a birds-eye view of the new 360 degree stage, there was also a VIP party before the show. We had an all-you-can-eat buffet and an open bar and met some great people along the way. One of which somewhat knew my cousin from Penn State.
The coolest thing about these shows is that there is no imagined community here. People are there for the same exact thing and most have been doing this for 20 or 30 years. I get to reflect on how long I've been listening to this band and all the bookmarks jammed into the chapters of my life. It's no joke.
Like most folks I saw them first at Live Aid in 1985. I didn't know what I saw, but it resonated with me. It was my Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I had 8 distorted hours of Live Aid on a VHS tape for years at my folks house. I watched the U2 performance about 100 times. I'd toss it in every once in while to revisit until one day I came home from college and when I went to watch it, I found it replaced by a Penn State/Michigan game. U2 at Live Aid was gone. There was no Youtube, Napster etc. There was no commercial release of the show until about 3 years ago. Now with Youtube it's at your fingertips all the time.
I'd say it was about 1986 I was working at Acme Market as a cashier. My first job and I had to wear a tie and some type of smock with a name tag on it. With their label maker I punched in The Edge on my name tag. I still have it somewhere. It made for some interesting dialogue. I'd ask the old ladies if they wanted paper or plastic and they'd reply, "we don't care for the plastic bags, they hurt our hands and fall over when you set them on the table, we'll have paper. Thank you, The Edge."
I went to college and put a couple u2 posters on my dorm wall along with them on the cover of Time magazine. I still have them somewhere too. A bunch of friends from my dorm went to the Joshua Tree Tour at Three Rivers Stadium in the Fall of 1987. I squinted from the 700 level in deep deep center field. Bono had his arm in a cast from falling the night before from some scaffolding. It was my first real concert. It was a cold night and I had bad skin and bad hair and my fathers army jacket on that would later be stolen at a frat party. I saw every u2 tour since then except one while we were in LA cause I was out of work and broke as a joke. We were in Philly when they returned the next time around. I took Kristen for the first time and we hit the pit lottery and saw them from the first row. The next time we saw them they brought out Bruce Springsteen and his wife to do a song. I yelped like a little school girl.
In my confirming belief that good people find good people, I tend to give u2 credit for meeting one of my best friends. I think it was the summer of '93 when I met my buddy Mika from Finland. We were at a mutual friends gathering and he was mulling about like a Fin out a water with a rather befuddled look on his face. He had a 'how'd I get here' look on his face which wasn't uncommon for International students who ended up in Indiana, Pennsylvania. I'd seen it a number of times and I may have chuckled and carried on, but this dude had a u2 t-shirt on. We talked about the tours and how his friends sent him off the night before with a party and the Zooropa CD. We were fast friends and dumped a lot of bills in the Coney Island jukebox playing Achtung Baby over the next couple years. Mika just called me this morning to tell me they're buying extra u2 tix for next summers Helsinki stop...whether we make it over there or not. This isn't the first time he's done that.
So yeah, that's all I got. Those are the highlights. The trip to Boston was another bookmark. As mentioned we met some more good people and I did the best I could with my point and shoot camera. I'd again like to thank those that gave us this thoughtful gift. My folks, Kristen's folks, Aunt Gummy and Uncle Weiner, Megan and Bill, AJ and Tiffany, Tibby and Mugger and Michelle. You guys rock.
I mentioned in a previous posting that we had my niece here for a couple days this summer. It's become a tradition of sorts. We get her way down south here to Pa and then toss her around the Eastern Seaboard like a 2 dollar hat. She stayed with Grammy and Poppy in Mountaintop and then to us and then to Granny Jean in Md. We had a good day couple days. I always try and plan a decent tour, but it's usually the little things that the kid remembers and puts on her list of things to do. Like walking Frank through the woods or jumping around the backyard through the sprinkler or putting marshmallows in the microwave.
This year we went down the shore as they say here in Philly. We went to Ocean City, New Jersey, but not before stopping at Kristen's Blood Drive at the Ballpark. I gave Ella a tour of the park and then we got to try on a Phillies WS ring for kicks. Alright, the ballpark stop was for me, but Ocean City was for her. The water was perfect and we stayed in for at least 2 hours. We ate pizza, cotton candy, soft pretzels, a water ice and candy dots. I avoided the spin-y rides but we both dug the log flume ride.
The coolest thing about this years visit is that Ella was able to sit in the front seat for the first time. Due to age and weight restrictions she's always had to sit in the back. It's no fun taking a road trip when the only other person in the car is in the backseat. You feel more like your tooling Mz Daisy around town looking for the Piggly Wiggly. We sat in the front seat and listened to tunes and talked about Michael Jackson, the new school year and Vampires.
A couple years ago we went to see Wilco at Madison Square Garden with our friends Phil and Pam. Flaming Lips opened that night. Both Wilco and Flaming Lips were just starting to tip toe into the mainstream consciousness and this gig was in many ways big-time vindication as well as a coming out party for two bands at the top of their game. Jeff Tweedy played in pajamas and brought in the new year, but what the Flaming lips did that night I still have a hard time putting in words...and I've tried. I've tried to describe how the show opened that night. The costumes, the lead singer in a bubble walking on top of their fans, the hundreds, maybe thousands of boulder-size balloons filling the arena. You can try and describe this, but you really have to see it and live it.
A couple weekends ago we saw the Lips again in Philadelphia. Watch the clip below to try and get a sense of what I'm talking about. We were on our way to a perfect night when about 45 minutes into this show on Penns Landing we got washed away. The clouds opened and it started raining buckets. They warned us it was coming and it wasn't a great surprise, but how fast we got soaked was pretty impressive. We tilted our heads back when we thought we felt the first drop. I got splashed in the eye with what felt like water balloon.
At 40 these moments are just as fun as when your 20, but you're just a little more prepared. While all the college kids were dancing around in the rain, I put my camera in a little water-tight zip lock and Kristen and I put our little rain slickers on in unison. We felt like nerds while the kids were rain dancing. The thunder cracked and the lighting felt like it was the bringing on the End of Days. We floated through town trying to find us a cab to get us home. It was fun...and maybe still a perfect night.
Great show. Great band. Wish we got more than 8 songs, but as mentioned, the energy in the enclosed video eclipses most of the shows we've ever seen.
Today they released the entire Beatles catalog again on CD, entirely remixed and remastered from the original recording tapes. I remember it was a big deal when they first released the catalog in the late 80s, but right from the start there was criticism that the mixing was muddy and the music sounded flat compared to the vinyl predecessors. I've never considered myself to be much of an audiophile. I've always enjoyed music whether it was coming out of my crappy Toyota car speakers or through my bose headphones. I recognize the difference, but I don't obsess over it. Today I bought one of the new CDs at the local record store. I purchased Beatles for Sale as it was one of the few albums that I didn't already have in one format or another. I put it on the player at home and it really is unbelievable. It's like sitting in the room with them as they recorded it. I've read about the big Beatles re-release for a couple years now and at this point I suspect it's going to be the compact disc's last hurrah. It signified the legitimacy of the compact discs when they were first released and now they will ultimately put the format to bed for good. The funny thing is that many people will simply rip/compress the cds to their itunes and lose a lot of the vibrancy that makes the re-release so vital. I just thought I'd say that if you of the likelihood to still buy a CD, pick up you favorite Beatles CD and put it on a decent stereo. It lives up to the hype.
I've always been happy to line up for the latest Beatles marketing push. I simply don't listen to the Beatles as much these days and it's a good reminder to pull out Abby Road or Revolver and listen to what are just a few of many perfect albums. Start to Finish. Along with the CD, the album format is also a soon-to-be-lost art form. Of course the artists will still be out there making albums, but the mindset of listening to an album from beginning to end is already gone . It's generational and it's technological. It's a singles/itunes world and you just grab the song you like for a buck. If you do have the whole album it's never been easier to skip to the next song. I find myself sometimes skipping the 1 or 2 second pause in between songs on my ipod. Even with cassettes, it was such a pain in the ass to skip or search for a song, you basically just let it play out.
I remember liking the Beatles as a kid. I couldn't tell them apart, but I liked everything about them. I was 12 when John Lennon was shot and I think it was then that I started wondering what the big deal was. I've always remembered the song Gotta Get You Into my Life as a song from my childhood. This didn't make sense though. I always remembered it as a single on the radio from the 70s. I eventually read somewhere that they re-released that particular song in 1976, 10 years after it's first release. After a quick google I was able to confirm it.
I was talking to my niece Ella while she was staying with us this summer. We got to chatting about the Beatles and I had her memorize the names of the Beatles. I don't know why, I just thought it would be something cool that a 12 year old could rattle off at some point and time in the future. I showed her a couple pictures of the Beatles and she seemed to think they all pretty much looked the same too. Ella's been asking for a puppy for the last year or so, but she couldn't decide whether she prefered a Chihuahua or a Dachhund (hot dog). Last week my sister and Bill got her a mix of both breeds from their local no-kill shelter. Ella named him Ringo.
