Raiders of the Lost Keys

Saturday night I went to see Umphrey's McGee in Philly. They're probably the best "never heard of them" band around and if you get the chance, you should hear of them. I'll spare you the details, but I lost my keys twice during the evening - once in a restaurant and again at the show later. There were bouts of mild panic followed by resolution when they once showed up at the hostess station and later with a security guard. The problem with being a single person is that when something like that happens, there is no alternative course of action. If my keys had indeed vanished, I ran several scenarios over in my head, all of which involved a locksmith to (a) get me into my car and (b) get me into my house. Getting home would have involved an expensive cab ride and sleeping outside until the locksmith was available would have been uncomfortable. I think that's why single people have shorter life spans.

I'm personally boycotting the Sarah Palin appearances on Saturday Night Live. I haven't seen the show in years, and even though the clips are available on every corner of the Internet, I really couldn't care less. I think it's inappropriate for a candidate for president to appear on a sketch comedy show. It's supposed to make us think she's "just like us" but it strikes me as a last ditch effort to drum up interest in the campaign. I ain't falling for it.

Could Tampa Rays pitcher Matt Garza spit a little more? The guy spits constantly. He spews little flecks of spit all over the place. It's very difficult to watch and I couldn't help but wonder if he does it at home.

The World Series starts on Wednesday. We have tickets to game 4 on Sunday. As it happens, there is an Eagles game at 1pm and a Who concert at 8pm at the aptly named sports complex. Parking will be nearly impossible, so I'll go out of my way to use public transportation. The Phillies game is at 8:30 and I cannot figure a way that there will be enough available parking. Between the exodus of the football fans and the influx of AARP members going to the Who show, it will be a nightmare.

The cat's blood work came back today. His kidney ailment is still progressing, but isn't yet at the terminal stage, so we'll have another Christmas together and he'll easily make it to the age of 18 in February. The downside is that the vet wants me to come in and learn how to give him saline injections to keep him hydrated. Geez. I have to give a 17-year old cat a needle. That should go over big. Maybe, while I'm there, they can show me how to stitch up my own hands and heal puncture wounds.

The Summer of Corporate Love

Chances are you don't watch it, but there is a TV program on Sunday called CBS Sunday Morning, that for my money is better than 60 Minutes. The biggest difference is that the morning program is buried in Sunday morning TV wasteland, while the big-time news show is on at the perfect time for a big-time news show.

This morning, there was a story about the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, of which I have vague memories, mostly because I was 9 years old and not yet into psychedelic drugs, and partly because my father had died in May of that year, and for me it was summer, but there was precious little love.

The focus of the Sunday Morning piece was the nostalgia that is brought about by the so-called Summer of Love. I say so-called because for most of those involved it it, the Summer of Love was 1966. The following year was the summer that the media latched onto it and made it the cultural event that it has become. That's where I come in.

Most of us in the Blogosphere bemoan the idea that big media latches onto something and jerks it off until it becomes cliche. Every little event that is capable of selling advertising is sold, every big time sporting event is moved to prime-time and every popular concept is copied until it disappears into its own nonsense. It's nice to know that sometimes it isn't just modern culture that does such things.

Scott Mckenzie did a song (written by John Phillips) called "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" and thousands of people did what the song said. Shortly thereafter, big media (including 60 Minutes) did stories about the hippie counter-culture and the race was on.

America's version of "The Hippie" was the kid giving the peace sign, encrusted in flowers and tie-dyed T-shirt, while the reality, as you can imagine, was quite different. Nevertheless, the summer of 1967 marked the end of the hippie movement. It would survive in fits and starts through such media creations as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and The Monkees TV shows, but, for those in on the ground floor of the movement, the thrill was gone, and as happens now, big business had sucked the will out of the people who founded something that was supposed to change the world. What they found was that the world does not want to be changed, and if they want to live differently, the fewer people who know about it, the better.

For me, as a nine-year old, my view of the world was skewed by both television and what the "squares" [adults] told me. Music was always the glue, and as such, it remains. Glue bonds. As they said in this morning's program, the real geniuses of the time spent their energy creating music. People like John Phillips, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Grateful Dead and countless others who tried ... albeit unsuccessfully ... to change the world. What they would find is that the world is a big place controlled by people who wish to shape ideas in such a way that they can earn money from them. This works in opposition to those in the business of earning money from things that they perceive as ground-breaking or ... God forbid ... popular.

It isn't so much different than what happens now, some 40 years later. Popular TV shows, music, movies or pop-culture are imitated until their energy is sapped and the original idea is rendered inert. That is why I've always been comfortable with bands like Umphrey's McGee and Gov't Mule and TV shows that are not that popular. Leave me alone, and I'll wallow in my happiness. If you don't like it, mores the better. Once big business and corporate media gets hold of something it becomes mass-market peace signs and mass-produced tie-dyed T-shirts. Spare me.

You might think that modern life is much different than the life of your parents or (egad) your grandparents, but trust me, it is not.

Mathematically speaking...

...there is a thirty percent chance that my drunk-ass will get rained on before I get to the Electric Factory for the Umphrey's McGee show tonight. Math, as we know, is absolute - which is why I'm drinking Southern Comfort.

"Why aren't you driving?" you ask. I never drive to the city. The Electric Factory is near 6th and Callowhill, so I'll take the Speed Line to 8th and Market and start looking for bars. Any old port in the storm.

A full report will be filed tomorrow - but not too early.

I do know this: It won't be "lame", like Police drummer Stewart Copeland called their Vancouver show the other night.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing? "This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea." "The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock," Copeland reported. "And so it goes, for song after song," he wrote, with tunes such as "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" reduced to ruin.
"It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule," he said.
Fortunately, no fists flew backstage as they did back in the Police's heyday. The threesome fell into each other's arms laughing hysterically, Copeland said.
"Screw it, it's only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it's time to get out of Vancouver."

Sure, screw it. Meanwhile, the $400 ticket holders have no recourse, when they would probably like to ram a drumstick up your ass or ... at the very least ... squeeze a lemon in your eye.

I can be reasonably sure that the Umphrey's McGee show will not be lame, which is why I don't go in for stadium rock or over-hyped nonsense passing itself off as entertainment. It's also why I don't attend these reunion shows.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer was undoubtedly my favorite band as a youngster. When they re-united I wasn't going anywhere near the Mann Center. I preferred to be alone with my memories of great music. For those too young to remember or those who wished they had gone in the 70s, they have free will. For me, I will not sully the memory of a great band with a money-grab show made for industry, with ticket prices twenty times what we would have paid when the band was actually worth seeing.

The McGee ticket cost me $22, and I would see them twenty times before I'd see those grubbing geezers once. Good luck to you, if you're going.

Pardon me while I rant

As I grow older, I find that my feeble mind (my second choice for a blog title) gets fixated on one thing at the exclusion of all others. In this case, it's my rather hectic schedule over the next week or so.

My new bike should be together and road-worthy by Friday or Saturday. In addition to paying for it (ugggghh) I need to find time to get there and pick it up. I'll be off on Friday, so I hope it is ready then. Why am I taking Friday off? Glad you asked. Friday night, Umphrey's McGee is playing at The Electric Factory. The show starts at 8:30 (with Tea Leaf Green), and they probably won't go on until around 10 - and play for 3 hours or so - so I'm sleeping in a bit so I won't fall asleep on the Hi-Speed line and miss my stop, as I have done in the past.

That's a particularly odd experience. I take the train from the Woodcrest station, and coming home I have to be fairly alert to be sure I don't miss my stop. Once, I got off a stop too soon and once I slept through it altogether. Either is bad, since the trains run every 40 minutes at those single-digit hours, so it takes a while to bring another one around to pick my drunk ass up. Hopefully, a few extra hours of Friday morning sleep will be just the thing to keep me coherent until the end of the evening/morning.

The following week is the LPGA McDonald's Championship in Havre de Grace, Maryland. I'm still undecided as to whether I will spend Wednesday night there or drive the hour-plus back and forth. I want to go for the practice round on Wednesday and the first round on Thursday, skip Friday and go back Saturday and probably Sunday. There is a nearby Motel 6 that will cost $80, so the money is a factor. The extra rest and lower stress might be worth it, though. Compound that with the inevitable shore traffic and it might be a bargain.

In the middle of all this (or maybe because of it) my television is starting to act strangely. The screen goes black at random moments. Turning it off and back on brings the picture back, but I'm worried because these things almost always get worse, and never better. I'm not up for TV shopping right now.

Maybe Lindsey Lohan has it right? Do some funky shit and throw yourself into rehab. I'm sure she has personal assistants to do her laundry and TV shopping. Forget about work. What is it exactly that she does, anyway? As near as I can tell, it's a bunch of crappy movies and equally crappy records. On the IMDB, the list of her as "self" is ten times as long as the list of her as "actress" - what's that tell you?

How did I get started on this?

And now, this one says "I've hit rock bottom." Get a grip, Britney. You are so far from rock bottom that you can't even see it from where you are. Take a walk along Broad Street and check on a guy curled up in a cardboard box with more teeth than cents and let me know where your rock hits bottom.

These people kill me. Over the weekend, I stumbled upon The Simple Life, with those two simpletons, Paris Hilton and whatshername - seemingly making a joke out of life's occupations. I don't know if we are supposed to think these two jackasses are hot, stupid or funny. I don't think they are any of those things, and I found the show to be insulting to people who live in the real world and have to make decisions about things with the knowledge that their decisions might end up with them in a cardboard box on Broad Street.

At one point in the show, they were "working" in a fast-food joint. Their supervisor gave them their paychecks - $56 each. One of them asked, "What are we supposed to do with this?" The supervisor told them, "You cash it."

"Where?", they asked. I immediately knew that they had never seen a check or had to actually sign one and take it to the bank, because when the answer "The bank" came, the look on their faces spoke volumes.

So, here we are in our world of made-up celebrities who seem to believe that their made-up world is shattered every time one of them crashes a Mercedes or gets so drunk that they would forget their train station - if they needed a train. Meanwhile, the rest of us would love to have a Mercedes to crash and a TV show to exploit people who made them what they are, just so we could feel what rock bottom is really like.

I gotta go pee.

Four hours of my life I will never get back.

Too tired to go to the gym, so I decided to sit and relax in front of my friend, the TV. These were my choices tonight:

Nancy Grace debating for the one-millionth time, the controversy over the fate of Anna Nicole's baby. Holy crap, Nancy. Open a newspaper and find something else to talk about, will ya? Please.

Dancing with the Stars, which, in spite of the dearth of stars, continues with the dancing. Even Cheryl Burke wasn't enough to keep me tuned in. Seemingly, for three hours it went on - some "results show" or something. "Results" of what, I have no idea. Boring.

On several channels, the ongoing nonsense over some stupid remarks made by a radio host who long ago was irrelevant, and only now has found a voice, common sense notwithstanding. Anus, I think his name is. Meanwhile, the piling on continues, with bystanders becoming interested parties. Include me out.

Jim Cramer screaming about Charter Communications, and telling his viewers that if they bid this stock up to three dollars, he "would never forgive you". Before he was through with his diatribe, the stock was trading at $3.02. C'mon, Jim. Your stupid viewers bid up every piece of crap you talk up, did you expect any different with this one? The power of TV.

Something on Fox called American Idol. I have no idea. I still haven't seen it.

Glenn Beck, professional jackass, interviewing himself (that's right) over the stupid remarks issue. Jesus H. Christ, the people they give TV shows to. I have no idea.

Common sense told me to stay away from O'Reilly and Paula Zahn, since I was already irritated.

Over on TBS, there's the Braves and Nationals playing baseball, but I dislike the Braves commentators so, that it made a great pitching performance by Tim Hudson almost unwatchable. Cy Young award this year for Hudson.

What to do?

I downloaded another Umphrey's McGee album, Anchor Drops, and restored my faith in all that is good in the world. Music and good taste.

I think I'm on to something with these guys. So much so, that I'm considering driving to D.C. on Saturday to see them in the craphole that is the 9:30 Club. Ya gotta really like a band to go there, but that's where the band is.

Doors open at 5:30.

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Fun with wind chill and other things

Indulge me while I take a break from watching paunchy men play golf. Thank you.

After yesterday's post about my travails at the ballpark, I wanted to see what the wind chill was. A 43-degree temperature with 24mph winds makes for a "real-feel" of 34 degrees, according to the calculator over at NASA's site. I was curious, since I think the wind chill is a ridiculous notion, as to what the wind chill was when it was 95. Factor in a 20mph wind, and it feels like 103. I thought the wind was supposed to cool us down?

Wind chill is ridiculous to me because I never really know what any temperature feels like. If it feels like 34 degrees, what does 34 feel like? I don't know, because when it's 34, the wind chill is 25. For practice, I go outside on calm days so I can figure out what real temperatures feel like. It's a hobby.

Has anybody besides me noticed this little note that comes up when uploading a photo on Blogger? Apparently, we have a limit, after which, what happens? I suppose we'll have to start deleting posts to make room for the new ones. On the bright side, I've been at this for a year, and only used 2% of my allotted space, so I suppose I have another 49 years of blogging before I have to start thinking about that. So I have that going for me.

In my ongoing quest for interesting new music, I may have found something. For some time, I have been hearing snippets of Umphrey's McGee on the local college radio station. They don't get a lot of exposure (which should have been a dead giveaway as to the quality) and I have a hard time diving into a band on the strength of one tune.

While poking around the Real Player site (where I download music), I came across them under the "Jam band" category, and downloaded Safety in Numbers, which came out in 2006.

Suffice it to say that I'm having trouble getting it out of my CD player, and the songs stick in my head so much that I wander around humming them to myself like a mental patient.

If you're a fan of interesting music, with a touch of jazz syncopation, a little thoughtfulness, great playing and some intelligent songwriting, this one is highly recommended. If you are not a fan of those things, well ... I really don't know what to recommend.

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