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Barring more acts of Mother Nature and her destructive forces of late, I'll be touching down at CID on Thursday afternoon. I plan to eat, frisbee golf, parade, beer band, tailgate, march, relax, and catch up with good friends. Plans are to crash at la casa de Wendy and party wherever I get invited. So if you've got plans for a get-together, I'm in town. That's all I'm saying.
I stay up late. I'm a night owl. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass when I have to wake up be somewhere early in the morning. But right now it's all worth it. You know why? I'm watching the Bangles video for "Walk Like an Egyptian" on VH1 Classic! Classic 80's song plus cheesy video effects? You just can't go wrong.
Now, if only I can find a rerun of Jem and the Holograms. She's truly outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
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Saturday morning, of this most recent weekend past, I drove out to Orient Point and caught the ferry to New London, CT. The intention was to catch the fast ferry and take the free bus to Foxwoods Casino and meet George. Also, I wanted to watch the Hawks play, but we wont speak of that disgusting event.
Since I missed the noon ferry, I had to take the car ferry and then I drove back around to NY with George and stayed over. Sunday morning in NYC is now my favorite time in the city. You can park anywhere! I went to the Apple Store in SoHo to check out the new iPod Nano. It's incredibly delicious! Lust worthy! I almost bought one on the spot. Luckily I didn't, because the thing only syncs with USB 2.0 and all my machines are USB 1.1 damnit. It's smaller than a business card, and only as thick as a pencil. I want one in Black. Think about Christmas.
Well, sometimes my best intentions of a long and excruciatinly detailed post never actually materialize. Instead of just succumbing to the pressue of my best intentions (like Wendy sometimes does) and not posting forever because of it, I'm just going to get something on paper (or, on the computer as it were). Indeed, it was a good weekend.
As Jenniffer and BC have already noticed (and commented, thanks kids) I've put up photos from both the Green Day Concert and the DCA Prelims. The concert was amazing. Jimmy Eat World opened up for Green Day and played just about 35 minutes of songs from their newest album and a few classics. They even played "The Middle" and I rolled my eyes at Donor and we enjoyed the rest of the show. I am not familiar with the band that opened for Jimmy Eat World, but they have a crazy squirrely drummer. I've been a fan of JEW's music for several years now, and they played "The Sweetness" and the whole stadium sang along. It's a cheesy gimmick, and it's been done, but in a huge stadium it was really cool. In between acts, some guy in the section across from us actually started the wave - for no reason. And the stadium went with it.
They eventually changed the stage to the full-on rock out configuration for Green Day, all while a drunken guy in a bunny costume stumbled around on stage. When Green Day did take the stage, they totally owned Giant Stadium. Owned it. Later on, Billie Joe said it was the largest concert they've played in North America. Killer! They played about half the songs from their album American Idiot, saving "Wake Me Up When September Ends" for the end. They also played a lot of songs from their earlier albums. It was amusing to have heard all the kids at the show sing along to the new songs, but fall silent during the classics. Yeah, they've been together 16 years, and you're only 10, kiddo.
For the encore, they played "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" which is a really emotionally moving song. And then there were fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks! They really had quite a big pyrotechnics budget for the show. Flames, raining sparks, and a huge disco ball. Actually, that was really neat. They had a bright enough spotlight on the huge disco ball that the entire inside of the stadium was lit up with moving lights. Might sound cheesy, but that's a big 'ole stadium and trust me it was cool.
I was stressing a bit over how to get to the Meadowlands sports complex over in East Rutherford, New Jersey since I was driving from Long Island. I decided eventually that it would be foolish to drive across the NY Metro area during rush hour and try to find the place and pay $15 to park there. Instead, I drove into NYC in the afternoon, took the subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and got a $9 roundtrip bus ticket. I spent 4 minutes in line to buy the ticket, and 2 minutes waiting for the bus to fill up. Once full, off we went. I thought for sure we would sit in traffic for a long time trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel. Wrong! There are special bus lanes getting to the tunnel from the PABT, and we were there in 20 minutes! Getting back to NY was just as easy, wait in line 15 minutes, 20 minute ride back, 5 minutes on the Subway and I'm back on the Upper West Side, where George and Edgar generously put me up for the night.
Who wants to go to work after a night like that?! Not me, for sure so I slept in and then had a nice visit to the Museum of Modern Art. Actually, I was less impressed that I wanted to be. Where, oh here can I find some Salvador Dal’ in New York. MoMa has the tiny yet famous Persistence of Memory and the Met has a piece or two, but I am still not satisfied. They did have a Rubik's cube, and subway signs, and the classic clear crystal Bic pens. And that horrible Jackson Pollock mess. I did kinda like a few things, check out the photos from the end of the Green Day photo album.
Friday night - off to the campground. I drove to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania to the campground, found Adam, and relaxed. I hadn't been camping in nearly forever. I think it was confirmation camp way back in the day, and that was in a cabin. I had to fix the air mattress in the tent, as it was a bit leaky, but other than that things went smoothly.
Saturday I left for Scranton, PA to watch the Drum Corps Associates preliminary competition with Donor and the Bulaga family. I was there early enough to park for free [I had your mom, I crawled inside, I parked my car for free!!!] and helped Donor watch the souvineer stand for a few minutes. For our efforts, we were rewarded with wrist bands allowing us field access (which we never used). We got some lunch, and some beers, and then settled in for hours and hours of drum corps. It was great. I needed my drum corps fix, and I got it!
The scary thing that happened, you ask? Oh that. During the second song of the Kilties performance, one of the horn players dropped on the field. This isn't unheard of in DCI, as sometimes people pass out but quickly recover. This guy didn't get up or show any movement at all after the song ended. Someone in the stands starts screaming that he fell down and one other horn player breaks formation (gasp!) to check him out. Several other people run on the field, the Drum Major puts the corps at parade rest and it's really clear that this guy is not moving at all. The corps marches off and 10 minutes later an ambulance arrives. The entire stadium watches him get shocked twice. It was very scary and we didn't know what happened after they took him away. After cleaning up and another corps marching, the Kilties came back on and performed the whole show again. Very admirable.
The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing in the woods. Bonfires. Dancing. Variety Shows. Y'know, the normal sort of campground peace and quiet. And then I drove back to NY, had dinner in NYC with George and Edgar (who loaned me their GPS which was incredibly handy) and Vinny. Then I got lost in Brooklyn and ended up taking way too many bridges to get home. The BQE is a strange an mysterious road, truly. And I almost got into a horrible accident when a minivan had a tire blowout right in front of me. ABS brakes saved my life, and no more scratches were put on my car.
This will be short, and I'll edit and lengthen it later, just wanted to say that my vacation was wonderful. Wonderful. WONDERFUL! So random, so relaxing, so much what I needed. I'm better now. I have pictures. Green Day rocked. ROCKED! The drum corps show was cool (yet a scary thing happened). The camping was perfect. Every star in the sky was shining, the days were warm and the evenings cool.
And now I'm back at work again.
