Month: July 2001

There are very few things more fun for me than seeing live music. Last night, I caught Barenaked Ladies at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. I have wanted to see this band for years, and I finally got around to it, thank to Randi. Our seats were pretty far away on the lawn in the back but we still had a pretty good view of the stage over everybody’s heads, and there were large video screens to give us close-ups and silly videos. They played a good mix of their older and newer songs, and had a lot of fun bantering on stage. Apparently Bon Jovi was playing the same night at Giants Stadium. Steven from BNL told the audience that they were originally booked for Giants Stadium, but since Jon Bon Jovi is from New Jersey and BNL is from Canada, the Ladies were given the boot.

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Things I learned this weekend from my trip through the Mid-Atlantic States:

• When pulling you over for speeding, Virginia cops will try to frighten you with their mysterious ways and silly hats, but if there’s a cute girl in the car, they’ll only give you a warning.
• Not only is Econolodge cheap, it is also ugly, uncomfortable, noisy, leaky, and the remote controls for the television don’t work.
• The Jersey Shore doesn’t quite stack up to Virgina Beach’s beach, but at least you won’t see Norfolk’s own Eric the Half-a-Turtle on Atlantic City sands. (On the beach in Norfolk we saw a rock with strange patterns. On further inspection, that is, by looking at the other side of the “rock,” we realized we were now looking at the front half of a turtle or tortoise that seemed to be missing its back half.)
• The Abbey Road Pub and Restaurant has a Beatles imitation band that performs occasionally. According to our waitress, “they’re awful.” The food was good however, so if you’re in town, make sure you go, but avoid 9:30 on Friday nights.
• From what I am told, you should not sit in the sand if you are wearing a women’s bathingsuit. The suits are designed in such a way that a pocket is formed around the crotch. This pocket will collect sand and when you stand up it will spill all over you. No, I do not know this from first-hand experience. Only from word of mouth. And if you’re trying to read into the fact that I used the words “crotch,” “hand” and “mouth” within close proximity, stop. You have a dirty mind. An’ Mama don’ allow that ‘roun’ here.

This past weekend I drove to Norfolk, Virginia for work. I visited Harbor Park, home of the Norfolk Tides, a minor-leage basbeball team that feeds to the Mets. The stadium was nice. I wouldn’t say the same about the rest of Norfolk. The town was pretty much run-down. It seemed to be fairly religious place—there were churches on just about every corner. On almost every corner that did not house a church, there was a fast food place called Church’s Chicken or something similar. (“Our customers love us because we offer them BIG PIECES of juicy chicken at LITTLE PRICES.”)

During the evening, Alissa and I went to Virginia Beach. They don’t have a boardwalk like Atlantic City or even Seaside Heights. All the beachfront property seems to be owened by hotels, so all of the boardwalk-type shops are actually on the street. There was some sort of city festival going on while we were there, and there were numerous musical performing groups. On one corner there was a polka band with clarinet and accordion players, in front of one store there was a trio consisting of two marimbas or xylophones and a drum set, and on one blocked-off street we saw the “Beachstreet USA All-Stars.” This was a group of 12 or so Virginia Beach musicians, most high school or early-college aged, on sousaphones, trombones, trumpets, a snare and two marching bass drums. They played and marched (well, wandered) an entertaining show with audience participation. [DELETED].

On the way home, we stopped to see Gwen, Heather, and other friends. We ended up having Sunday morning (well, afternoon) brunch with them and I met a few more nice people.

It’s Monday evening at this point, and I have not been “home” since Thursday morning. I wonder what new suprises await me.

Strange lights were in the sky this past weekend. And you thought this kind of stuff only happened in fields and farms “down south.” I can almost hear Orson Welles delivering the newscast from his grave.

MTV turns 20 years old this year, saying goodbye to its awkward teens. Since grunge fizzled out, for the most part MTV shaped pop music into what it is currently. The experts are forecasting a huge, imminent shift in the popular taste of 12- to 19-year-olds who make up the network’s audience: “It?s gonna be a bucket of ice water in the face, and to those kids, Eminem and Britney are not gonna be enough. I think they?re gonna be biting the hand that?s been feeding them all this crap.”

Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul,
And make it hard for me to see,
Ahhh, thoughts all seem to stray to places far away,
I need a change of scenery.

That’s the Monkees, though probably not since they didn’t write most of their songs then. Anyway, our web host for work is giving me major headaches. Not only can they not explain the outages our web server has during the day, they refuse to admit there are outages. And I know I’m not crazy, or else all the people e-mailing and calling me to let me know the site is down are crazy, too. On top of that, their support site was hacked today. Yes, someone replaced the information on support.media3.net with a little message saying the site was hacked. Beautiful. My plan is to get rid of these jokers by the end of the week and have a new host up and running the site.

The Best and Worst (but mostly the worst) of New Jersey. I came across this while looking for drive-in movie theaters in the Great Garden State.

How a child realizes he is destined to be a percussionist: My parents said when I was really little, I would sit on the couch and listen to music on the stereo and bang my head against the back of the couch in time to the music.

Here’s an email I got today:

Also, it looks like we’re talking about a college football team and a drum corps with mostly high school students.

I think I’ll move to Washington, D.C., become an intern, and mysteriously disappear. But seriously folks…

Check out Congressman Gary A. Condit’s official website. Make sure you click on Internship Opportunities, and maybe even fill out the application. As you could imagine, he’s looking.

After work earlier today (yesterday, actually), I headed into The City for the free New York Philharmonic concert and fireworks in Central Park. After a little bit of drizzle threatened to postpone the performance, the storm stayed far enough away for the whole night. The first half of the concert consisted of music by Leonard Bernstein, including stuff from West Side Story, Candide, and On The Town. Special guest performers included Joshua Bell and a forgettable female vocalist. The conductor, who was giving his Philharmonic premier, was pretty animated. He felt the need to give “woo-hoos” when acknowledging the soloists.

After a long intermission, the orchestra returned with a Prokofiev symphony, which didn’t seem to hold too many people’s interest. About two minutes of fireworks followed the concert. I was hoping for a bigger display. Maybe next year.

At the concert, I met up with Melissa. She attended Camp Ramah when I did, about twelve years ago. I hadn’t seen her since. She managed to find me online at a Moxy Fruvous community website, and we made plans to meet at the concert, with a group of friends (Darren, Stacey, Randi, Stacey G., Amy, Devon and Keith). We talked about people we remember from camp, and the usual “catching-up” kind of stuff.

All in all, it was a good night. I like New York City; I need to find excuses to go there more often. I was even able to park on the street, in the same exact parking space I used last year for the same event. Although it was a space with a one hour parking limit, my car was thankfully not ticketed or towed, just like it wasn’t last year. It’s a good thing it wasn’t towed, since I intended on driving Randi, Stacey G., and Amy back home afterward. Luckilly, it all worked out.