A new post up at Pensive Pelican
Fifty Year Olds Shouldn’t Jump Up and Down for Two Hours
Ouch! But how do you resist at such a great concert. Suburban Legends, Big D and the Kids Table, Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish at the Town Ballroom. Any one of these bands is worth turning up for, but the four together made a really powerhouse show.
I had seen every one of these bands live except for Goldfinger and I was really excited to see them.I quickly claimed a spot in the front, up against the barricade. It was a capacity crowd and hot as anything. I was covered in sweat, some of it my own, but I didn’t dare give up my prime spot to get a drink.
Suburban Legends and Big D were high energy as usual and funny and engaging at the lobby merch table. One of the prime advantages of smaller venues over arena shows is the ability to mingle and chat with the talent.
Goldfinger’s set began with lead singer John Feldman surfing out into the crowd, still singing while buoyed on the hands of his fans. He returned to the stage and brought out his family. For such a profanity-laced performance performance, it was pretty family oriented.
Nothing but water on the stage (Big D had water too, but plenty of PBR as well), lots of local attention for Buffalo native, drummer Darrin Pfieffer. Bassist Kelly LeMieux turned the video camera back onto the audience and asked the crowd to wish his stepfather a Happy Father’s Day.
My favorite Goldfinger song is Superman which has some lyrics which really speak to me:
“So here I am, growing older all the time, Looking older all the time, Feeling younger in my mind.”
Yep. That’s me.
Feldman asked who had been following them since their beginnings in ’94 and owned their self-titled album and invited a dozen or so audience members who raised their hands onto the stage to sing along.
Goldfinger encored with 99 Red Balloons and made way for the headliner, Reel Big Fish.
RBF entered to the Star Wars theme and launched into their brand of brass-heavy high energy ska that we know and love.
My next concert I have lined up is Warped Tour at Darien Lake. None of these bands will be there unfortunately, but Streetlight Manifesto will be, another must see ska band.
Foursquare for Smartasses
Foursquare is a fun and free app for iPhone and Android. Once you download the app, you can use it to “Check In” wherever you are. Foursquare can then announce your presence to your friends and followers on Facebook or Twitter.
You can compete with your friends to earn the most check in points.
You can become Mayor of places that you visit most frequently.
You can create your own places. I created Cellotown and I check in every time I play.
Some businesses provide deals that you have access to by checking in.
You can find contact information and directions to businesses and it’s way quicker than googling.
The smartass part part comes in the tips section. You can add something helpful such as “The clam chowder is great” or you can say something like, “You can have your salad served in a bread bowl or a human head!”
People commonly create check-ins for their homes. I would love to check into the homes of random people. I would especially like to usurp them of their mayorship.
Now someone just has to stop me before I download Instagram.
Horrifying New Entry in the Young Adult Mystery Genre
Any high school senior will attest to this.
Sorry the image is so blurry, but the cashier at Barnes & Noble already thought I was insane.
And more Barnes & Noble fun, which may be redundant for anyone also following me on twitter:
Fun idea for Barnes & Noble: pick up 50 Shades of Grey and reenact Meg Ryan’s diner scene in When Harry Met Sally.
We’ve Added a Water Feature to Our Backyard
It was unfortunately unpopular with our target market:
Sadly, the patio furniture did not make it through the night as evidenced by the body bags:
A Very Shiny Mother’s Day
This may have been my favorite mothers day to date. Our son and a bunch of his friends called me from Sandy Eggo and yelled Happy Mothers Day, then he made me tell them my hipster joke. *
We drove the four and a half hours to our daughter’s college to pick up a carload of her stuff and hug her a lot ( her last final is tomorrow). We had Spenser with us, so we went to McDonalds and got McNuggets and ate them in the McPark. We hung out for a while and then got Starbucks. (love)
*How many Hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?
(It’s an obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it)
Also, Spenser’s adoption story was featured on the Furever Dachshund Rescue website.
Everyone has probably seen this Time mag cover by now. The mom looks so angry, the kid is probably getting powdered milk. And look at his face. He’s thinking, “I’m missing Tball for THIS?”
Mika Brzezinsky made the excellent point on Morning Joe, that they put the titillating photo of the hot young mom on the cover when the story inside was about Dr. William Sears. I’m actually surprised that she is not carrying a briefcase and a spatula.
My biggest problem the cover is that it makes breastfeeding moms look edgy and weird when they have been fighting for a sliver of acceptance for decades.
Happy Mother’s Day!
The Avengers: Observations, Questions and a Three Word Spoiler
Observations
Captain America needs a cooler secret weapon than a giant frisbee.
I love Ironman. Tony Stark such an awesome smartass. My husband will testify that smartassitude is one of the top things I look for in a man.
I love that the women were kickass. No shrinking violets, no damsels in distress. (ps. I want to be Scarlett Johansson when I grow up).
Loki’s costume made him look like a demented goat. Has he no close friends that could pull him aside and suggesting a more badass look if he is going to look like a proper villain.
If you have pretzel bites with cheese balanced on your lap and your husband selects the wrong pretzel bite, the cheese will pour into your boot. You know that nasty orange, foul-smelling chemically melty cheese food product food cheese. In my boot.
Questions
I didn’t get the bow and arrow dude. I just kept calling him boy Katniss.
So can the Hulk channel his anger or not? It was a little inconsistent.
Three Word Spoiler: Giant Space Turtles
Bonus from my friend Maureen: Stay until after the credits. Really. To the very, very end.
I’m Not BranchingOut and You Can’t Make Me
BranchOut is a new career networking site on Facebook. I am the queen of early adopters. I am currently on:
Facebook
Linked In
Twitter (as is my dog @spenserthedog)
MySpace (pretty much dormant)
Pinterest
Google + (still waiting for the +)
Goodreads
Letterboxd
Wordpress
Blogger
Digg
Spotify
Sound cloud
Klout
StumbleUpon
But for some reason, I have not accepted any BranchOut invitations to date. I think it’s because my persona on different social networking sites.
On Linked In, I have about 450 connections, and I am nothing but professional there.
On Facebook, I have almost 700 wildly disparate friends; former work colleagues, friends I’ve made on the Internet, church friends, theatre people, college kids, so my Facebook interactions are pretty tame. Pictures of my dog, goofy comments or jokes, posts about my favorite music. I try to keep it inoffensive, but reasonably true to myself.
Twitter, on the other hand, is where I let my hair down. My 157 followers (haha! Spenser only has 21) are treated to off-color humor and political opinion.
I think this is why I am resisting BranchOut. I just don’t like commingling my social media. How about you. Are you the same across various media?
Everest, My Yearly Obsession
Every year, I obsessively follow Everest summit attempt converge. This is Everest Season. There is a tiny sliver of time each year where the weather is marginally cooperative. A time when it’s slightly less likely that you will be buried in an avalanche, crushed by a serac or swallowed by a shifting glacier. That window is early to mid-May.
The weeks ahead are spent acclimatizing to an environment that is completely inhospitable to human life. Climbers frequently use the “climb high, sleep low” technique. This involves repeated day climbs to successively higher altitudes, sometimes laying in supplies at higher camps before returning to lower elevations to recuperate.
This year’s teams include veteran climber Conrad Anker, with National Geographic this year and a group from the Mayo Clinic who will be studying the effects of altitude on the human body.
I may write about this quite a bit here because it seems that IRL, the sentence, “An experienced Sherpa died today on the Khumbu icefall when he fell into a crevasse while crossing a ladder without clipping into the fixed ropes” is a conversation stopper.
In case you are interested, check out #oneverest on twitter or the National Geographic blog:
Ooh Something Shiny! 