Frisbee golf: Fun

Frisbee golf on the side of a mountain while wearing shorts and sneakers and being massively out of shape: a crazy adventure.

Graduation Duck for the win.

This post is going to be short, and it’s going to be a total bitch fest.

Xfinity Center.  Formerly known as the Comcast Center.  Formerly formerly known as the Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts.

It’s a shed venue on the outskirts of nowhere in Mansfield, MA.  When you’re inside watching a band, any band, it is pretty much the best venue in New England.  Well, the best one I’ve been to.  It holds 19,000 people (we looked it up last night).  It used to have six sections of seats under the roof and then a big swath of lawn seating beyond the end of the roof.  Now it has four more sections of seating that used to be grass, and a little strip of grass seating about 18 million miles from the stage.  Every show I’ve seen at this place since… the late 80’s?  Early 90’s?  I think I was still in high school the first time I went there… every show has sounded great and my sight lines have been pretty much perfect.  I was outside of the roof when we saw Rush on the Test for Echo tour and it rained.  There was another show more recently where we got stuck in the rain too.  It was still a great experience.

All of that is once you’re inside the venue.  What about everything else.

It’s the absolute worst.  The total, be all end all of worst.

The traffic jam trying to get into the parking lot cost us about a half hour worth of our lives, and we were already late to begin with.  It’s always a miserable experience trying to get in.  There is one road.  One entrance*.  That’s it.  No alternatives.  Traffic backs up forever.

When you are inside it is a somewhat long walk to your seat.  That’s not complaint worthy at all, it’s just a fact.  What is complaint worthy is the fact that you can’t see the venue from the entrance.  It’s all picturesque and pretty and all, but you can’t just look up and walk to where you need to be.  You have to follow this long, meandering path.  Of course it is littered with vendor booths, only some of which are related to the show.  What’s worse is that I know there are signs directing you to where you need to be… you just can’t see them.  They got lost in the tent clutter, or are only a few feet off the ground.  It’s really tough to figure out where you need to be.

In the grand scheme of things though, those are minor complaints.

Here comes the big one…….

You can’t leave.

No matter how bad you want to go home after the show, you just can’t.  Remember that thing about there being one entrance?  Well that means there’s only one exit too.

19,000 people… that’s a lot of cars.  A lot of cars.  All of them trying to leave at the same time… through one exit.

Because we were late to the show last night our car was parked in a remote lot.  Far, far from the venue.  The show ended at 10:55.  Since we’ve been coming to this place for decades, we knew not to join the mad rush for the exits.  We sat down in our seats and waited until we were asked to leave.  Once the staff started kicking people out we started the long trek back to the car.  We got there at 11:19.  Yes, there was a bathroom stop involved too, full disclosure.

We piled into the car, I tried playing the Powerslave album at Mike’s request but there wasn’t enough cell signal and it kept crapping out.  Since we were toward the end of the rush, there were already a lot of cars pulled out of their spots.  Maybe half of them.  They were all stopped by the traffic jam.  Not surprising.

No one moved.  As time passed everyone continued to not move.  I finally saw tail lights in the distance that were not sitting still at 12:11.  Just shy of one hour after we got to the car.  I pulled out of the parking spot and found a place in line.  We inched along, along with everyone else, slowly making our way toward the one exit.  When we finally reached route 140 it was 12:34.  I have to say, 23 minutes from spot to road was much faster than I expected it to be.

We then sat in traffic on 140 because there were 19,000 people all being directed to the same highway ramp… whether you actually wanted to go that way or not.  We weren’t given a choice.  140 to 495 South.  Fortunately, that’s where we wanted to go.

Once we got onto 495 it was simple.  495 South to 95 North to 93 North.  We met at Larry’s work so I dropped them off there and then continued home.  I walked in the door at 1:40, was in bed by 1:42, and asleep by 1:45.

What a friggin’ nightmare.  I knew it was going to happen, because it’s been happening at this place for 30 years.  I think that’s the part that pisses me off the most.  Not that it’s a logistical kick in the crotch, but that it’s the same logistical kick in the crotch that it’s been since I was in high school.  Nothing has changed.  Nothing is ever going to change.

Best venue in the region… worst location/design in the universe.

*we actually stumbled on a second exit, but it was 20 feet away from the main exit.  They have added an Uber specific entrance.  We saw it when we drove in and of course there was no one there.  That entrance became our exit, but it didn’t really affect anything as it just meant that we merged with the main exit at route 140 instead of while we were still in the parking lot.

We were 1000000 miles away from the stage, but my iPhone’s camera did a pretty good job. I kept it in my pocket for most of the show, and I felt good about that.

The show was a huge spectacle. They can still bring it. None of them have lost a step, even though they are all in their 60’s. Just a great show, start to finish, top to bottom.

Oh and Bruce had freakin’ flame throwers!

Let me say that one more time… flame throwers.

Yesterday I posted a long, meandering, boring post that you can read here.

In that post I mentioned the Manson family story and how some of the details from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood jibed with my memory.  After work last night I started listening to an audiobook copy of Helter Skelter.  It’s setting me straight.

So far I have learned that my memory of Mr and Mrs Polanski buying Dennis Wilson’s house is completely false.  In fact, not only was it not Dennis Wilson’s house, but the Polanskis didn’t own it.  In the movie, Manson mentions that he was looking for Wilson and some one named Terry whose last name escapes me right now.  It was Terry’s house.  He was renting it.  When Roman Polanski and Sharron Tate moved in, they took over Terry whatshisname’s lease.  They didn’t buy the house, they rented it.

So what I’m getting at here is my memory sucks.

 

Addendum to the Addendum:  Terry whatshisname is Terry Melcher.  Doris Day’s son.  The guy who produced the first two Byrds records.

So Rob, how’s all that sleep stuff going?  You haven’t mentioned it in a while.

Well I’m glad you asked.

While in Florida I was sleeping about 6-8 hours a night, with one insane sub four hour night thrown in for luck.  Since coming home I’ve been mostly back to the 5-6 hour range with one amazing 10 hour sleep last weekend.

Twice this week though the app that tracks the CPAP machine, as opposed to the one that works off of my Apple Watch, reported something weird.  I am starting to have issues with my mask seal.  I’m leaking air somewhere, somehow.  I haven’t noticed anything, outside of the obvious moments when I lose the seal completely and I have to take the mask off and put it back on.  Apparently on Friday the 26th I had major leak issues, and then last night I had them again only much less severe.  I didn’t notice anything.  Two nights ago I could feel the mask moving around on my face and it kept me up and drove me a little nuts.  Last night though, when the app registered problems, I didn’t feel the mask moving around, and I didn’t wake up with it partially unsealed, or anything like that.  I woke up once a little after 3:00 am, and then again a little before 6:00 am and everything seemed fine both times.

The app has a little blurb on side effects of mask leakage and one of them is dry mouth.  When I woke up at 3:00 this morning I definitely had dry mouth.  I actually went and got a glass of water because of it.  Is that a sign that something happened?  I thought maybe it meant that my machine’s water tank was empty.  It was dark so I couldn’t see and I forgot to check it this morning.  I will check it when I get home.  I have a link to a video that talks about leakage and I need to watch that tonight as well.

All of the other stats from Friday and from last night were good.  Last night in particular had a low number of apnea events.  I didn’t wake my wife so I know I wasn’t making noise.  In fact, she was snoring last night, not me (hi sweetie!).

I’m curious to find out what happened.  In the couple of months I’ve been doing this, I’ve only had two instances of mask leakage.  I figured I’d be able to tell when it happened, but nope.  At least I’ve been able to sleep longer before the mask wakes me up.  I’m still taking it off, briefly, most nights, but not nearly as often as I did when I first started using the machine.

Now if we could just get the quality of sleep up to a level where I don’t feel tired all the time.  That would be sweet.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day, you know? (Said the guy who made an art form of procrastination yesterday)

I have this huge music project to do that I haven’t touched in two weeks (at least).  I have all the toys and gear I wanted to have before I started recording (actually, there should be a pack of 12-string strings coming in the mail today which is the last thing I wanted) but I haven’t done any actual recording.  I’ve got something like 20 ideas in the pipeline, but I haven’t done any work on any of them.  I don’t want to get shut out this year.  I need to make some time.

Time?  What’s that?

One thing that is definitely happening is Iron Maiden on Thursday.  Larry and Mike and I have an email thread going where we are figuring out the logistics of getting down to Mansfield for the show.  I don’t think I’ve gone to a show since Rush stopped touring and that was four years ago.  I’m ready for some arena rock excess, and Maiden is just the ticket.  Apparently this show included flame throwers.  Let me just say that one more time:

Flame Throwers.

My wife and I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night.  I’ve seen some reviews calling it a masterpiece.  It’s not a masterpiece.  It’s good.  Really good.  Funny as hell and creepy like crazy when it needs to be.  Not a lot of violence, but just enough to satisfy.  All of the performances are great.  There’s really nothing not to love.  Masterpiece though?  I don’t think so.  It’s not as Earth shatteringly amazing as Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.  It’s probably better than Jackie Brown or Kill Bill.  Maybe.  I haven’t seen Hateful Eight or Django Unchained yet, though I have them on iTunes and just need to find the time to sit and watch them.  It feels a little like Inglorious Bastards.  Excellent, but not something that will stay with you the way his first two movies did.  Go see it.  You’ll love it, and then you’ll go home and watch Pulp Fiction again.

Either that or you will read Helter Skelter.  I spent a good chunk of the movie trying to figure out if the Manson family depictions were accurate or not.  I think they were.  They were definitely disturbing at least.  The facts of the case all seemed to jibe with my memory.  I’m pretty sure Polanski bought Dennis Wilson’s house, and Manson did have some sort of music relationship with the Beach Boys.  I can’t remember if the owner of the ranch the family lived on was still around through the whole thing or not.  He’s there in the movie, but was he in real life?  I can’t recall.  That’s why I just picked up a copy of the audio book version of Helter Skelter.  I need to know the facts.  Just the facts, in fact.

Anyway, go see the movie.  You won’t regret it.  Quentin Tarantino absolutely still has it.  The guy is the best.  Buy the damn ticket and see it in the damn theater.

I think I started this post off by talking about music.  I want to get back to writing and recording for 50/90.  I don’t see it happening tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Not Thursday though.  Iron Maiden.  Right.  Bring it on.

The theme of today has been procrastination. This has lead to seeing the new Tarantino movie, a nice dinner, and gelato, all with the love of my life. It has also lead to this blog post.

Viva la procrastination!