Last Thursday I went to the Bruins home opener against Calgary and wonder of wonders the damn Bruins won a game!  Of course Calgary has looked almost as bad as Boston in the early going, but we beggars can’t be choosers.

I took the camera of course and shot over 300 pictures, all of them in bursts of five.  Just about all of them came out fantastic.  I was stunned.  I unloaded the camera and ran a slideshow of everything and I couldn’t believe it.  Great shot after great shot after great shot.  Amazing, eh?

Here’s one

My brother and his wife and my sister went to the game with me.  We sat in the cheap seats (section 327 row 13) and we failed to win any of the many suck-up-to-the-few-fans-who-are-still-paying-attention give aways that they had.  Maybe next year.  Our chances should improve as the team is sucking so bad right now that the building should be empty from here on out.

Friday was a real nice night out too.  Kelli and I went to The Border Cafe.  The Tejas was vintage.  Seering pain from the buffalo sauce.  It was great.  After that we went to TT the Bears to see Victory at Sea.  The high points of their set were up in the ionosphere somewhere and the low points… well I don’t think there were any low points.  Another great set from a fantastic band.  One of the best parts of the show, for me at least, was that they played a new song.  I always get a little nervous when I go see a band and they don’t play at least one new song.  I fear stagnation in my favorite bands.  I’ve gone off the deep end for a lot of bands just in time to see them split up.  I tend to see new material as a sign that the break up is not near.  Hopefully they’ll come back from their upcoming tour of Europe with 30-40 new songs.  My fingers are crossed.

I took the camera to the show, of course, but nothing I took came out.  I thought the pictures I took at the Glass Set show were bad, but at least there were images on the files.  The pictures I took Friday were almost entirely blacked out.  I’m not sure what I did.  The only difference I noticed was that my batteries were running low this time.  I’ll have to do some experimenting with battery power in dark situations.  I did not use the flash at all.  I hate going to shows and seeing some twit standing in the crowd taking flash shots of the band.  I always envision the band members getting pissed at the flashing light… but then I’ve been on stage plenty of times when cameras were in heavy use and I don’t recall ever even noticing a camera flash, never mind being annoyed by it.  Maybe the next show I go to I’ll use it and see if anyone on the stage throws anything at me.

I am a little disappointed in myself.  Mary Lou Lord played at Sky Bar on Saturday and I wanted to go but I wussed out.  I had no one to go with, and for some reason this time that bugged me.  It’s never stopped me before.  Maybe it’s the bar.  I’ve only been there once (to see Betwixt many years ago) and I don’t recall much about the place (except that Leah Callahan smashed her head against one of the lights above the pool table… ouch).  Come to think of it, I’ve only seen Mary Lou Lord once and I went to that show alone… and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had full blown mononucleosis.  If that didn’t keep me away from a show, what could have kept me away Saturday.  I would have brought the camera too, of course.

Who knows.  Maybe I’m just feeling old.  I find that happening a lot these days… probably because I’m old.

Anyway, the Bruins lost to Buffalo on Saturday in humiliating fashion.  The Lowell Devils played in Portland on Friday and lost, and in Worcester on Saturday and won.  St. Louis took game one of the World Series, and tonight Detroit took game two.  Kelli and I discussed going to Wisconsin in December for Mike the Bass Player’s iminent baby’s christening.

Who knows what’s going to happen.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

Who knows.

Tonight however I was watching the Cardinals/Mets game.  I’m routing for the Cardinals for two simple reasons.  First, they are not a New York team.  Second, I asked my cousin’s three kids who they were routing for and the middle one’s response of, “St Louis!” while waving his hands in the air was so enthusiastic as to be utterly infections.  Go Cardinals.

Not that it matters.  Whoever wins the National League pennant is just going to get dismantled by the Tigers.

On to tonight’s telecast.  I honestly think that the broadcast team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver is the single worst thing that has ever happened to Major League Baseball.  Worse than steroids.  Worse than Pete Rose.  Worse than the 1919 Black Sox.  They are inexcusably horrible.

I found myself routing not for the Cards, but for the announcers to be caught saying something stupid.  I was hoping that every time Joe Buck bitched about a managerial desision that the move in question would work so well as to make Buck need to appologize.  I wanted every inane, retarded, stupid prediction that came out of McCarvers mouth to be 100% incorrect.  I wanted the exact opposite of everything they said to happen.

Then as the game was entering the late innings I did the one thing that might actually wake the morons at Fox up to how terrible their broadcasts have become…  When the clock hit 10:30 pm eastern time I switched over to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network and watched Futurama.

Thanks Bender.

I recently upgraded my iTunes software to the latest version, which includes optional new user interfaces.  One of them (which I kinda like) groups the songs by album title and displays them with the album artwork.  It looks a little something like this:

That’s kinda nice, huh?  It looks retarded if you don’t have any images attached to the audio files though.

So, as previously mentioned, I pop into iTunes and try to decide what to listen to whilst I tinker with my module’s conversion code.  I decide to go with Emily Grogan because she plays in a band called Angeline who’s playing at the Lizard Lounge tonight and I’m going to miss them in favor of opening night for the Lowell Devils.

There are two Emily Grogan records that I know of.  iO and Falseometer.  I like ’em both.  I like ’em both a lot.  iO is pretty recent and I bought it from cdbaby (I think… mighta been amazon?).  Falseometer goes back a ways.  I don’t remember when I first heard that record, but I know I initially heard it online.  The whole thing was available for download from Emily’s website.  I also found a copy complete with artwork (it looked rather home made, and not long after the sticker on the disc peeled itself off.) at a used record store.  I want to say it was CD Spins on Newbury St. but I’m not 100% sure.

I couldn’t remember if I’d attached images to the mp3’s so I selected the iTunes display shown above.  There was a picture for iO, but not for Falseometer.  So off to google I go!

I entered “Emily Grogan” into google images and came up with a bunch of nice pictures of Emily, and a bunch of different sized copies of the iO cover art, but no Falseometer.  So I enter “Falseometer” and it comes back with nothing.  Seems like I’m out of luck.  Just as a last stab though I clicked on Google Web just to see what would come up.

Surprise!

The first site that returned was a familiar one.  It was familiar because it was my myspace blog entry from Tuesday February 28, 2006.  The day my car’s odometer hit 100,000 miles.

Hmmm, thinks me.  That was rather unexpected.  I wonder if google is the reason why my blog view counter keeps increasing at an ever increasing rate.  It used to be that with each new post I made I’d get a hit or two a day for a day or two and that was it.  Now I get 10-15 hits a day for two or three days and then one or two a day until I post something new.

That’s a tiny bit unsettling.  It makes me wanna stop swearing and be more faithful in my use of speling and gramar, checkars.  Maybe I’ll start writing this crap in Word first and then copy it into the myspace editor.  It also makes me want to put a link to anything I happen to mention in the text.  Did you notice the excessive number of links in this post?  If I’m going to plug something, the least I can do is save readers the trouble of doing a google search for more information… assuming anyone gives a rat’s ass… oh shit, another swear!  Oh shit, another one!  He said it again!

So, if you end up at my blog through google please remember that I know nothing of which I speak.  I’m just a blathering idiot talking out of my fat ass.

fin

The NHL season has begun…

HOCKEY IS BACK!

GAME ON!

Of course I got my ass kicked.  We played a damn kids game and I got smoked.  Marisa was the big winner despite the fact that she had seven people trying to keep her pieces out of the damn safe zone.

The next group activity will probably be a trip to Witch’s Woods for a little haunted house flavored Halloween goodness.  To make things even scarier, we’re thinking about going on Friday the 13th!  BOO!

Oh well… the Bruins are playing a preseason game right now and NESN is carrying it… so back to the game.

Good day.

PS:  Last December I went out to Wisconsin to visit Mike & Tammy.  They have two cats.  I took about two minutes of video of the cats beating the crap out of each other during a cat-nip binge.  I’ve been trying for as long as myspace has had the video section to get the damn thing to post.  Last week it finally did.

Here it is:
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf
Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Today was a (sort of) momentous day.  The first Lowell hockey game of the season.  Okay, it was just preseason and it wasn’t actually Lowell playing even though it was in Lowell.

Training camp opened for most NHL teams this past Thursday.  That makes today day four… and some how a number of NHL teams played exhibition games today.  Including the Bruins and the New Jersey Devils.  Since the AHL franchise in Lowell is now owned by the Devils, it was decided that an NHL preseason game would be played at the Tsongas arena in Lowell between the Devils and the Boston Bruins.  Today was the day.

It was a little strange.   Regardless of my season tickets for the team-formerly-known-as-the-Lock-Monsters I am still a 100% Boston Bruins fan.  The keyword there being Boston.  I bleed black and gold and all that horse shit, but when I’m sitting in the last row of section G at The Senate (that’s my personal nickname for the Tsongas Arena… Paul Tsongas was a US Senator… get it?) the Bruins (from Providence this time) are the enemy.  It’s a little confusing to route for the Bruins in that setting.  I did it though, and as you might have guessed New Jersey spanked Boston’s ass in humiliating fashion.  5-0.  It was so bad there was one guy actively Booing the Bruins.  It’s day 4 of training camp and they’re hearing booos.  That can’t be good.

Granted, the Devils were one Martin Brodeur away from a pretty good NHL line up, while the Bruins had Patrice Bergeron, Brad Boyes, and most of their rookie camp.  Given the rosters, the slaughter was not surprising.  I was hoping we’d get to see Zdeno Chara make his triumphant return to Lowell.  Chara played for the Lock Monsters during their first season, back in ’98/’99.  I was also hoping to see the B’s first round pick, 18 year old Phil Kessel who is said to have completely dazzled during the rookie camp last week.  No dice though.  Neither guy played.

Here’s a picture… this was from the second period, and I think when the puck popped into the air above goalie Frank Doyle’s head it was as close as Boston came to a goal.

Now for Saturday’s festivities.  We had an engagement party for My sister Lisa and her fiance Ken.  Ken is originally from Maine and most of his family is still there, but they all made the drive to Tewksbury and we had a catered clambake.  It’s a little crazy… the wedding isn’t until July (click here to see how much time is left until their big day) and they already have most of the planning work done.
Church?  Check.
Reception hall?  Check.
Dresses?  Check, for all of them.
DJ?  Check.
I think the only thing left is the little thing that goes on top of the cake.  Everything else seems to be accounted for… and only 10 months or so left.

I wandered around the yard taking pictures.  Here’s a shot of Lisa & Ken that I cut out of a much wider shot.

Finally there was Friday.  I went to Bill’s Bar to see The Glass Set.  I tried to get a couple of people to go with me, but no one was available.  So I snuck into town after work and did some wandering until the doors opened at 9:00.  The band was kind enough to let me take pictures.  I was hoping I’d get lucky and take a few that they’d be able to use for something.  Not terribly likely.  I managed to touch up a few so that they were slightly better than disgustingly aweful, but for the most part I ended up with pictures that were either blurry enough to make you dizzy, or just pitch black.  Here’s one that was almost sort of okay.

This picture is actually a pretty good summation of them all.  Some light on center stage, and no light at all on either wing.

The band was excellent.  I don’t know if it was the new bass player or what, but they were much tighter than the last time I saw them.  The new songs sounded great.  I’m really looking forward to the next record.  If you get a chance to see them, go.  Just do it (as the commercials used to say).  See The Glass Set.

Now it’s Sunday afternoon and I am completely whiped out.  Just in time to be on call for a hospital’s Go-Live!  Yeah!  There were supposed to be two hospitals and I was kinda worried about one of them, but they moved their date until next month.  If you heared something that sounded like a wind storm on Tuesday or Wednesday morning last week it was probably me breathing a giguntic (as my cousin Abigail said yesterday) sigh or relief.

Right then, off to nap until the alarm clock goes off tomorrow, or the cell phone rings tonight… whichever comes first.

Good Day

Given all of that, I was beginning to fear that I would never witness a live performance of “The Fletcher Memorial Home” or “Sheep” or “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” or even Dark Side of the Moon by at least some of the people who are responsible for their composition.

As of last night I no longer have to worry about those things.

Roger Waters played at the Venue Formerly Known as Great Woods in Mansfield, MA last night and I finally saw the old bastard.  I’ve missed a few chances to see him live in the past, but I wasn’t going to miss him again damn it!

I’ve seen the other members of Pink Floyd twice, but both times were long after Mr. Waters left the band.  I sat in this very seat at this very computer and watched the AOL simulcast of Live 8 when all four of the old bastards stood onstage together for the first time since ’81 or so (and I didn’t watch as those fucking idiots at MTV went to commercial or the studio or whatever the fuck the halfwits did during “Comfortably Numb”),  but I wasn’t there so it doesn’t count.

The last time Floyd toured they did a full run through of Dark Side of the Moon at some shows, but not at the Foxboro Stadium show that I attended.

Roger’s current tour however includes Dark Side as the second set.  Would it have been better to hear it performed by the complete Floyd?  Of course it would have.  No question.  But this is probably as close as I’m going to get for now.  Maybe the 3/4 Floyd will tour again, maybe not.  For now though, I can say I saw 1/4 Floyd pull it off.

The band (is the Roger Waters band still known as The Bleeding Hearts Band?) consisted of a few familiar faces.  Graham Broad and Andy Fairweather-Low (I hope I spelled those right) have been Bleeding Hearts for a long time.  Snowy White dates all the way back to the 1977 Pink Floyd Animals tour where he was the rhythm guitarist/bassist in what would become known as The Surrogate Band.  Also, keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Jon Cairns (again, hope I spelled that right) was a member of the 3/4 Floyd touring band.  With Floyd he would sing some of Roger’s vocal parts… with Waters he sang some of Dave’s.  I wonder if he was a little confused.

Most of the lead guitar parts were handled by a guy I’d never heard of who shares a last name with Lemmy Kilminster (again, spelling?).  He was good, but he basically copped Gilmour’s solos.  Misters White and Fairweather-Low were much more improvisational, but Mr. Kilminster tended to color within the lines.  I’m not knocking the guy, he played very well and showed a ton of skill.  I just would have preferred to see him do a little more personal interpretation… its Pink Floyd music after all.  People don’t seem to remember that for years Floyd music was almost entirely improvised.  You can do your own thing without messing with the over-all spirit.

There was also a keyboard player named Harry Waters.  I don’t know if there is a relation, but it was overheard in the parking lot that Harry is Roger’s son.  Don’t quote me on that… you know how rock concert parking lot gossip is.  The sax player was Ian Ritchie (sp? once more) and thanks to the video screen I could tell that, yes he was playing a Selmer Tenor.  Nothing but the best for this guy.

As for the three backup singers, the only name I caught was Katie Kissoon and she’s been with Roger for ages too.  I apologize for missing the other two names.  All three of these women posses canonesque pipes and did nothing but impress.  Even Roger himself… he of the disappearing voice held up nicely.  There are still shades of the old maniacal screaming Roger, but the range has been drastically reduced and there is a gravelishness to the overall tone now.

One thing surprised me a little.  He only played two songs from his post-Floyd solo career and one of those was an as yet unpublished song.  Perfect Sense was the only song representing Roger’s three solo albums.  Everything else was Floyd.

Both sets and the encore were fantastic.  Dark Side of the Moon was, as mentioned, done in its entirety and a little more than half of Wish You Were Here was played too.  The treat for me was hearing “Southampton Dock” and “The Fletcher Memorial Home.”  None of the other members of Floyd want anything to do with The Final Cut album, but for all of its gloominess and depressiveness I absolutely love it.  I think the title song is one of Pink Floyd’s high water marks.  It’s as close to perfect as a song in the popular music vane can or will ever get.

Well, as you might imagine if you’ve read one of my retarded blogs in the past, there are horrible camera phone pictures to share.  One shot from the first set, and one from the second.  Yeah, in the second picture that bright blur in the middle of the picture is the moon from the video screen.

Enjoy!

Here’s a taste:

I used photobucket (urgh) to store this image and they reduced my humongeous file down to 1288×966.  I’m using html to reduce it further to a height of 400 pixels.  If you right click on the image and save it to your machine you should get the 1288×966 file.  Good luck.  Go Sox.  (even though it’s too late this year)