My buddy Joe is a Yankees fan. He always has been. He had the posters and pennants on his bedroom wall growing up. His Dad was a Yankees fan. This fan loyalty thing is mostly hereditary so I've never held it against him. Joe went to Penn and has lived in Philly ever since. He's a sports fan so he couldn't help but follow the Phillies. Through all the crappy teams of the last 15 years. Then something happened in recent years. The Phils put together a very good and likable team... even won a World Series.
In recent years I've seen a couple games with Joe. I got my first foul ball with Joe. We won a game used baseball bat by Shane Victorino in a raffle last year. And by we I mean Joe. I was one number off. Joe's kids are growing up Phillies fans. The Phillie Phanatic showed up at his sons 5th birthday. I posted that on my Studio blog. With his Yankee upbringing he's been both positive and encouraging in regard to the Phillies success.
Joe had a conversation with his five year old, Nicholas, about team loyalty on the day of the Phanatic appearance. Nicholas asked his Dad if he was a Phillies fan. Joe said "yes, of course." Nicholas asked, "Well, what about the Yankees?" Joe explained as best he could that Daddy liked both teams, different leagues, etc. Nicholas told his Dad that he just likes the Phillies and asked if it was okay that he just had one favorite team. Joe assured him that that was just fine.
Now I haven't spoken to Joe today about the Phillies/Yankees match-up, but he did mention a couple weeks ago that he was a little concerned. He didn't know what he'd do. It's easy enough to root for two teams through the season when they are in different leagues. I don't watch the American League much. It may as well be hockey through most of the summer. I start watching around playoff time. Joe's got a decision to make and I don't think it's going to be something he consciously decides. It will happen all by itself. When the bases are loaded and the team is down a run with two outs, Joe will be rooting for a team. There's no fence-walking in World Series baseball. Hopefully if he's really stuck, he'll ask his five year old.
Just a quick follow up to the post earlier this summer. The Bacon Brothers released their song New Years Day to benefit the Mummers and the New Years Day Parade. I think there is a DVD coming out as well with a documentary of the day. I've added my slide show of the recording session. I haven't added the Bacon Brothers song, but if you want to hear it or buy it it's here.
The picture above on the cover art is one that I took that afternoon. They had a CD release at our little record store on Main Street in Manayunk this past weekend. I was supposed to shoot it, but had a wedding. Strangely they didn't reschedule the event around my photography schedule.
"I like it," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said of the tense, four-hour-long 6-5 victory. Even when I hate it, I like it. It tests you. That's what the game is all about. It's exciting, but in some ways it's not too good." Sometimes you need an interpreter to weed through a Charlie Manual interview, but ultimately he gets right to the heart of the matter with that West Virginia accent. The Skipper was an easy target here in Philadelphia for a couple of years. When he was asked once about the folks here not liking him, he replied something along the lines of, "There are plenty of people that like me in other places, so that's okay." Now someday there will be a statue of Charlie Manual at the ballpark. I'd almost bet on it.
I met Charlie when I took these pictures above at this years ALS charity event. The stuck him in the dugout,,,in the sun for about 4 hours for photos with fans. I wasn't taking those fan photos, I just needed to get something of him for ALS. I was trying to be quick and discrete, but Charlie was set on trying to help me get this shot with this little girl while she was intent on sharing her corn chips with Uncle Charlie. I watch this team for those 162 games a year, and a lot of the post game interviews that come with them too, but sometimes you get sense of someone's disposition in just a brief personal interaction.
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.
