I went on an epic photographing journey today. I went to two locations and I walked something like four miles. Who even am I?
I paid for it with chores though. The cellar has been put back together after twice being blown off by a contractor. I won’t say it is “clean” but I will say it is drastically “cleaner” and that’s good enough for me. Speaking of contractors, yet another is scheduled to come by tomorrow to fix a piece of broken furniture in my step son’s room. Along with cleaning the cellar, I got everything ready for that too. Now it’s time to post some photos and then its time to nap.
I had a bunch on my photo to-do list this morning. One, shoot the sunrise (which required me getting out of bed at 4:00am and being on the road toward Hampton Beach, NH by 4:20… yikes!). Two put a roll of 35mm film through my new (to me) Nikon N90. Three, complete the Frugal Film Project for this month. Four, use the crap out of the 70–210mm zoom lens I got with the N90 on my Nikon Z5 via the FTZii adapter that I mistakenly called the F2Zii adapter in a post yesterday. Five, if possible finish off the roll of film in my Nikon FG-20 that’s been sitting there since March or so. In all five cases, mission accomplished.
I did not ship out the film for developing yet. I am planning on taking the N90 to my nephew’s high school graduation party next week (CONGRATULATIONS!!!!) and I might try to sneak in a second photowalk next Sunday too, if the weather cooperates. I’ll wait until after that to ship out the film. As usual, the day of blog post is only digital photos. Unlike all of my previous posts with images shot on my Z5, this one has a zoom lens. Not only a zoom lens, but a 70–210mm zoom lens!
First stop, Hampton Beach where the sky was completely clear and I saw the sun come out of the water. Success!
70mm
210mm. You can almost touch it!
I love how the sunrise lights up the windows
Dig that crazy star
The huge zoom let me steal a shot of this dude fishing. He was far away but the lens brought him close.
I drove up the coast a ways to get a different view. This time from way up a hill. The tide was so far out you had to walk half way to France to get to the water. It kinda took some of the granduer out of it for me. Oh well.
Rocks
Bike
Islands in the distance
210mm is kinda awesome
The next stop was the two Rail Trails in Newburyport, MA. One is called Clipper, I think, and the other is called Harbor… I think. The plan was to shoot film while walking away from the car, and then to shoot digital while walking back. So these first shorts are on the Harbor trail after I turned around. The sun reflecting off the water was kinda brutal. My Z5 and N90 both had fast enough shutter speeds to handle it, but my FG-20 and my Lomo Lubitell were struggling. I’m a tiny bit nervous about how some of those shots are going to turn out.
Zoomed way in on that little boat heading out to sea
See what I mean about the sun reflecting?
Boats, boats, boats!
Hey look, a lighthouse! I think it’s a restaurant
Water
The new lens managed some blurry background at f/4!
What do you call a boat like this? Is it a catamaran?
Today is Flag Day after all
The new lens managed some major blurry background at f/5.6! Wow!
How do you spell buoy?
Chairs
Steeple
Grass
More boats, boats, boats!
I took a lot of pictures of stairs for some reason
A little stroll through the woods
More blurry background
Bridge
Fence
Library books
And there you have it. A shit load of pointless pics that I had a lot of fun taking. The film version will come… someday… maybe.
The pricks did it to us again. Yesterday one of the contractors that was supposed to work on our house blew us off. After their arrival window closed they called and said they had to reschedule. My wife booked 7:30–10:00am today and got them to guarantee they’d show up.
They didn’t show up.
My wife called them at around 11:00am to tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier and they put her on hold for 40 minutes then sent her to voicemail. Boy did she let them have it. Both barrels.
In preparation for this work I had to tear one of the kids bedrooms apart and then totally destroy our entire basement. Since we’ve told them to screw, I started putting things right again. The bedroom is back to normal, an one area of the cellar is done. There is still a couple of hours worth of work to undo. I’ll take care of that tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I was sort of planning on taking a bag full of cameras to the ocean for sunrise this morning, but the rescheduling screwed all of that up. Instead, I am going to try to do it tomorrow. The forecast at the coast looks pretty good. The only downside is that sunrise is at 5:04am, which means I have to be out of bed at 4:00am. It should be worth it. I’m thinking of hitting a couple of spots near Hampton Beach, NH and then maybe a riverwalk somewhere. Maybe in Lowell? Not sure yet.
I got ready for this by putting film in all of the film cameras, and like a schmuck I burned one shot on the medium format camera. Dumb ass. I also put one of the manual focus lenses that came with my last eBay purchase onto my digital camera to give it a test drive. It worked great.
The lens is smart enough that the camera can control the aperture but not smart enough to auto focus. I have focus peeking turned on though and that is a HUGE help for an old fart with weak vision like me. I’m not sure if I will use it tomorrow, but I might. We’ll have to wait and see.
Other than that the only news right now is that my step daughter is coming home today. She’ll only be here a couple of days before she’s off again, but that’s fine with me. Any time with either of the kids in the house is time well spent.
Also, as a bit of forewarning to regular readers, once I get the cellar put back together you can expect a barage of music posts. I have five songs in progress right now and I hope to start putting guitars onto the demos soon. Duck and cover, everyone.
Until then, never forget that donald trump is a fascist and a rapist and a pedophile. Release the complete, unredacted epstein files. I don’t care if it brings down the entire US government. If it is bad enough to do that then the US government deserves to be brought down.
Finally, on the Rush 50 Something Tour, is Anika Nilles doing a drum solo?
Today is Friday and I took the day off to deal with two (2) contractors who were scheduled to work on our house today. One was going to install a new AC unit and the other was going to do some energy efficiency upgrades so that we can qualify for a loan and a rebate on the new AC. I don’t know how it worked that the loan/rebate qualification and the installation of the thing that requires the qualification could happen at the same time, but that’s how they were scheduled. Both jobs had a window of arrival from 11:00am to 1:00pm.
I said the window opened at 11:00am, right? Why then did they show up at 8:00am? I will never know, but they did.
So now, 11 hours later, we have a new AC. We paid for it with a loan that we… I think… technically… probably should not have qualified for yet even though we did somehow qualify for it? I am so confused. It works and we’re happy.
Unfortunately the energy eficiency upgrades didn’t happen because the crew who was supposed to be here between 11:00 and 1:00 postponed. We moved them to tomorrow. I’m kinda pissed. This work required me to do some serious prep work in the cellar and I really, really want to put everything back and have my cellar office space and cellar living room and cellar storage areas back the way they should be.
I was thinking about going to the ocean at sunrise and snapping some photos tomorrow, but now the contractors are coming at 7:30am and I won’t have time. I was hoping to chase the sun, then go home and re-rearrange the cellar, and then play some guitar because I have five (5) new song ideas in progress and I want to get some demos rolling. Maybe I can do those things on Sunday. Good times.
Change of subject to something that points out how fucking fucked up life in the USA is right now. I saw a post on social media talking about a podcast covering the Battlestar Galactica reboot from the early oughts. I watched the whole run of that show years ago. Maybe its time for a rewatch, how ‘bout it?
I went to the AppleTV app on my phone and searched for the show to see if its streaming anywhere. It is. Paramount+. We have a subscription to that. It’s one with advertisements, but I think I am going to start a big time binge. I logged in, searched for the show, clicked on the first episode, and sat through a commerical…
It was a commercial for UFC at the White House on Sunday. The commercial ran for 30 seconds and I figuratively vomited at least 27 times.
Donald Trump is a fascist. Donald Trump is a rapist. Donald Trump is a pedophile. Donald Trump defiled the White House with a fucking ultimate fighting arena. Fuck him. Fuck him right in the eye, then roll him over and fuck him in the other eye.
Four years after gastric bypass surgery and I find myself thinking back to some of the things I was told just before going under the knife.
I was told that for the rest of my life I was going to have random days where my stomach just decides it doesn’t want to be a team player and it is going to mess with me. Last night I felt like I was getting into one of those rare, random periods. I was feeling hunger pains much sooner after eating a meal than I normally do. I needed to eat more to stay out in front of the stomach aches. It’s annoying when that happens, but it is manageable. It’s painful but you can deal with it.
I was also told that there would be things that I liked to eat before getting rewired that I just won’t be able to eat anymore. My new stomach design simply wouldn’t be able to tolerate them any longer. I think I found one of them today. I spoke to a nutritionist at the weight loss clinic on Monday and she encouraged me to integrate more fruits and vegetables into my diet. I am a lifelong uber picky eater and there aren’t many fruits and vegetables that I like. Years ago I ate oranges pretty regularly. Maybe I could try to bring them back?
I had half an orange with my lunch. Nope. Never again. In the first hour after lunch I was hit with nausea twice. I wasn’t able to bring anything up, just a little tiny bit each time, but woah has this afternoon been an unpleasant dose of anti-orange reality. Yikes!
So that’s the story for today. Stomach issues all over the damn place. I guess that’s what I get for trying to alter a routine that works. Serves me right! Next time I’ll try eating an apple and see if that makes me sick. Fingers crossed.
PS: If this post makes it sounds like I am regretting my decision to have the bypass surgery that probably has more to do with me being a crappy writer than with reality. Fact is, I would do it again in a second. No hesitation. It has its difficult moments, yes, but as far as healthcare is concerned it is the best thing I’ve ever done. It is probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my entire life besides asking that nice girl from myspace.com if she wanted to go on a date. Love you, Jen.
We have one day left. One day before two, count ’em two (2) contractors come to our house to work on climate related issues. I am close to having everything ready for them. I’ll be ready, I promise.
Rush played their second show last night. I again was not in attendance but word on the street is they played ALL of 2112. When I say all I mean all of the suite on side one, not the whole album. They also apparently played The Analog Kid, a song that I often wondered if it was at least partly inspired by people like Eddie Van Halen. I picture Alex Lifeson listening to Van Halen and thinking to himself, I can do that and then hitting record and shredding like a shredding monster. Good stuff.
Did I mention that I am stressed as fuck over home improvement projects? Yup, stressed as fuck.
Why has traffic been so bad over the last two weeks. Every time I commute to the office it just gets worse than the time before. It’s a mess out there, kids.
What else… for the past 24 hours my post-gastric bypassed stomach has been weird. Queasy and achy and weird. They told me stuff like this was going to happen off and on for the rest of my life and sure enough here we are. I’ll survive.
I had a long text conversation with my step son today. Doctor Who cancelled its planned xmas episode and the show runner quit. The show runner has been saying that an xmas episode had been written and would start shooting in September and I guess now we know that was bullshit. They said nothing had been written and now the BBC is taking pitches from production compaines… meaning they have no plan in place for the future. My Doctor Who loving step son and I were both pretty pissed off by the news. He suggested Richard Ayoade should be the next Doctor. That’s a really good idea. I suggested Rupert Grint (if they insist on The Doctor being a white guy) or Jameela Jamil (if they do not insist on The Doctor being a white guy). I still stand by my suggestions, but I kinda wish I had thought of Richard Ayoade too. He’d be perfect.
Okay, my queasy stomach and I are really tired. I think we’re going to go to sleep now. G’night, Rush fans. G’night, Doctor Who fans too. Let’s all join together and try to not stress the fuck out over home improvement projects. Huzzah and shit.
I saw something while I was out running errands on Sunday that I wanted to write a short post about but I didn’t get around to it. I’ll write that short post now.
This is an example of the healthcare system in the United States firing on all cylinders. There are people here who believe that the healthcare system in the US is second to none. Those people vote.
On Sunday while driving home from the grocery store I saw a car with a sign painted on the door. I am pretty sure I was in Methuen, MA when I saw it but I might have been in Salem, NH.
The sign painted on the side of the car said something along the lines of:
Wanted: Kidney Donation. Call Joe at xxx-xxx-xxxx
So I have to ask… are we great again? Is begging for organs to transplant a sign that america is great again? Are we winning the war against nationalized healthcare that every other industrialized nation on the planet Earth has?
Rush played the Kia Forum in Los Angeles last night (or whatever the place is called these days).
I am so happy. I am so happy. I am so happy.
I said I wasn’t going to watch any clips but I am suspending that rule for this one thing. It’s the first thing that my social media algorithm madness sent my way. Pretty sure it’s the first song in the set. I haven’t watched it yet. I’ll post it here and then watch it.
I am so happy and I can’t wait for July 28th at Madison Square Garden. I cannot wait.
Tonight is the night. Rush returns to the stage in glorious fashion. Weirdly, they are starting this new tour at the same venue in Los Angeles as their final show back in 2015. Back then, Neil Peart wanted to retire. The other guys did not, but they went along and that was that. Then Neil passed away and time went on and eventually Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson started playing together for fun and eventually they brought in Anika Nilles to play drums and Loren Gold to play keyboards and now the tour is kicking off tonight.
So now, turning the attention back where it belongs… to me, we’ll be seeing the tour when it hits New York in late July. Boston wasn’t included in the initial tour announcement so we went with the closest city that was, and that was New York. I’ve seen Rush in New York a few times. If it weren’t for the fucking Yankees and the fucking Rangers and the fucking Mets and the fucking Islanders New York might be my favorite non-Boston city.
So the tour starts tonight but I still have nearly two months to wait before I can join in the fun. So what do I do? They have already stated that there will be multiple set lists so there’s a chance that even if I do get spoiled on that front there might still be surprises. I think I will try to avoid any foreknowledge though. Should I also avoid video clips online? I’ve only heard one song performed by this new lineup. They played Finding My Way at the Juno awards and it was freakin’ bliss. I don’t think I will be able to avoid all videos online, but I’ll probably try to avoid most… if I can… I don’t know.
Basically my point of view on this new Rush tour boils down to jealousy. I really wish we were in L.A. tonight. I’ve seen Rush 25 times. It would be pretty cool if 26 were tonight. I’ll happily wait my turn, but wouldn’t it be cool if around 7pm Pacific time or so… you know how it is.
Break a leg, Rush, both new members and old members.
Today is Saturday and I have nothing to write about. I did some home improvement related stuff. Jen and I went to the bank. I got an oil change in the car. I was supposed to go grocery shopping but I didn’t and now I have to go tomorrow.
That’s about it. Well, that and I listened to the first live album Rush released all the way through. All the World’s a Stage from 1976. I am sure I’ve said it before but I will say it again… that album is a total fucking banger from start to finish.
That’s all I have to say about today. In closing, allow me to remind you all that donald trump is a pedophile and a nazi and a piece of shit and a rapist. Thank you.
Triumph’s 50th anniversary tour, the Rock and Roll Machine Reloaded. My first Triumph show in almost 40 years.
It was pretty cool. I must admit. Rik Emmett used to have the highest voice in the universe. He most definitely does not have the highest voice in the universe anymore. He’s 72 years old, that is expected.
Back when I was in high school and playing in a cover band, two of the four band members were Triumph fans so naturally we wanted to play one of their songs. Emmett’s voice was so ridiculously high that no mere male mortal could ever pull them off. Fortunately, Triumph had two lead singers. Gil Moore, the drummer, sang lead on about half of the songs. None of the hits, mind you, but there was plenty to choose from. If we couldn’t sing the high voice songs, we could pull off the low voice songs, right?
Gil Moore’s voice was drastically deeper than Rik Emmett’s. That is a scientific fact. Unfortunately, there was some weird psycho-acoustic kind of thing going on where when you listened to the two of them singing side by side, Moore sounded like a normal range voice. However, when you removed Emmett’s voice from the equation you realized that Moore’s voice was also ridiculously high and very few mere male mortals could hit his high notes. He sounded normal in comparison but the truth was we couldn’t sing his songs either.
Now? 40 years later? Mr Moore’s voice is no longer ridiculously high. Suffice to say when either of the original band members were singing, the songs were played in lower keys and the melodies were adjusted so that the highest high notes were avoided. That’s just biology. It happens to all of us.
My issue was with the songs they didn’t sing. I was worried that with three new members on stage it was going to feel a little like a tribute band. For most of the show it did not, though watching Rik Emmett sit back and play rhythm guitar while Phil X absolutely shredded through a solo that was originally Rik’s… well that felt weird. Especially because it seems that Emmett’s guitar playing, unlike his voice, is every bit as good as it was 40 years ago. The dude was on fire all night. He just played nicely and let Phil X shine as well (not to imply that Rik’s singing wasn’t excellent, it was. It was just different, that’s all).
When Phil X or Todd Kerns took a lead vocal though… that felt wrong. I would have an instant where my brain would think to itself, this isn’t what I signed up for, then I would get over myself and just enjoy the song. Both of them were excellent, even though they both often had to break into falsetto to hit the high notes. I’m trying to think if either of them sang an Emmett song… I’m not sure. They both song Moore songs. Huh… maybe they’ll release a live record down the road somewhere and I’ll be able to revisit it.
So there were tribute band-esque moments. Absolutely. On the whole though, it was a really fun show. No explosions on stage like the old days, but lots of cool visuals and lots of lights.
The set list was pretty expansive too. When I saw them in 1986 that was my one complaint. There were no surprises other than not hitting the Never Surrender album at all, and leaving off a few songs that I thought would have been staples. That was not the case this time. I think every record except the crappy Surveillance album that was made after things came unglued and the 90’s attempt at a comeback, Edge of Excess, was represented. Let’s see…
Spoiler alert if you have tickets to one of the 2–3 remaining shows and don’t want to know what’s coming. Stop reading now. Otherwise…
They played Blinding Light show and one other thing from the first album. They played the Joe Walsh cover and the title song from Rock and Roll Machine. They played both of the hits from Just a Game, Lay it on the Line and Hold On. Must to my surprise, they played I Live for the Weekend, one of the two strong cuts from their not-so-good Progressions of Power record. They played the two obligatory songs from Allied Forces, Magic Power and Fight the Good Fight, as well as the title song. They played When the Lights go Down and Never Surrender from the Never Surrender album, two songs I sorely missed back in ’86. They played the two hits from Thunder Seven, Spellbound and Follow Your Heart. Side note, the video for Follow Your Heart was shot at the Providence Civic Center in Providence, RI and I’m pretty sure my future drummer, Bob from Break Even, was there. They played their biggest hit single, Somebody’s Out There from The Sport of Kings. Ironically it was the second song in the set and it was the second song in the set back in 1986. Silly, but I noticed. I’m sure I missed a song or two, but that’s most of what they played. Just don’t ask me to list them in order.
All that’s left of note is the photos. I took my little point and shoot camera. The one Jen got me for xmas. I took it out during the opening band’s set to see how it would work and it crashed on me. It just died. I was zooming in and the lens just stopped moving and then the LCD screen when black and that was it. I kept trying to reboot but nothing I did had any effect. The camera was dead, Jim. I took a few pics with my iPhone and they came out fine. Strangely, as the show was ending I tried one more time to reboot the point and shoot and it worked. I guess 30th time was the charm? I haven’t tried to use it today to see if it will work. I’m too scared. Oh well. Here are a few iPhone pics.
Of course I took most of the pics while Rik was playing a double neck. Is that a Dave Grohl signature that Phil is playing? I think so.
Gil and Rik. The double neck only came out for Blinding Light Show
Sparks
Gil and Rik
The whole back wall was one giant video screen
And there you have it, folks. My second Triumph concert and my first in almost 40 years. It was a really fun show. All that was missing was Mike Levine and my Uncle Johnny.
Inside the Red Head's Head 