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POG AND DOG!!!!!!

Weekend Fun Times

This weekend was very much fun.

Wilco was playing on the end of the Maine State Pier, it was very cool. I saw Moe. there last year, and it was good, so being moderate Wilco fans, we decided if we could get in for cheap, we would!

The lady and I heading over to the Dry Dock for drinks and dinner. The service there is nothing short of terrible. It took no less than 15 minutes to get a drink while we were sitting at the bar. The kid was overwhelmed and had no idea what he was really doing. Whatever, it's all good. We got a spot on the top deck so we could see the show. We ordered our food and it soon got cold out. I ran across the street and bought us a couple of long sleeved shirts. We met up with a couple friends, who had Wilco tickets.

After dinner, we walked up to the gate area. You could see the stage, kind of. We were thinking about leaving and the lady asked the women at the ticket booth if they had any tickets for sale. She said she did, and they were $30. I offered $40 for two, and they took it, which was awesome, as I think we had only missed a couple of songs. Wilco is great live, very tight, very fun. Took this video:



We ended up running into tons of people, and having a blast. After the show, we took some peeps to Amigo's to watch Nippin The Nub. I used to play with them, and it was super cool to see everyone again.



Saturday started off overcast, but I used the opportunity to record a song, that apparently I've been singing in the morning for the past few days. I think it will be called "I Have." Anyway, the sun came out and we decided to ride on the big motorcycle. It actually worked, which was great. We headed up to Yarmouth for the Clam festival, but did not actually get off the bike. We did around 70 miles. It was awesome. The evening was mellow and smooth and relaxing.



Sunday featured yet another sweet motorcycle ride. We went out to Cousin's Island in Freeport. It was pretty cool, nice new paved roads over there. Stopped for an incredible phallic looking chocolate covered banana. Once we got home, we decided to take the scooters out. Everything was going smoothly until "randy" (the silver and black scooter) just stopped working. It's a pain in the ass to access these batteries, and I was sure thats where the problem was. I bounced the rear wheel and the little red light came on. We turned around, and I got to Payson Park. She went home to get the bocce set, and we rocked it under the sun for at least an hour. It was an epic game. The scooter made it home, where I took it apart and found the culprit, a loose battery connection, that had actually melted some of the plastic on the casing. It's all better now though!

Rode the green boy into work today, as the motorcycle won't run in the morning.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Saw it at the Cinemagic (proper name for the film) in Westbrook.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie. It's beautifully shot, and the acting is good enough. The effects are spectacular, but there's something about it that rubbed me the wrong way. - The writing.

Steve Kloves has written so many harry potter scripts that they have become predictable and scripted. I felt as thought I knew what would happen before it did.

MAJOR KEY points were dropped, like oh I don't know- DUMBELDORES FUNERAL! It's the best chapter of the book, and it was completely cut out. what bullshit.

This movie had none of the suspense that was ever so important in the book. Trying to figure out they mysteries came all too easy to these characters. I felt the liberties taken were too much with the changes. I will never get over the fact that they cut Dumbeldore's funeral. This was my favorite book, and I am pretty disappointed about hardly a mention of Harry's loss of Sirius, or the hidden love between Tonks and Lupin. No minister of magic talking to the muggle prime minister.

To be fair they did leave in some good stuff too. the Cave scene was awesome to see Dumbeldore weak and crying. I would have liked to see this expanded upon. I seem to recall harry having a hard time getting Dumbeldore home as he cant Aporate. They showed no mention of this.

It's honestly a shame that they have such a spineless director who has no backbone when it comes to taking chances. He is doing exactly what he is told by the studio, and they don't really care how good or bad it is because they are going to make a billion dollars. I say can all the existing HP7 footage and let peter jackson or del toro, or curon start from scratch and make ONE good movie. The mere fact that they are splitting it up into two only speaks in words at the greed of WB and JK. Fuck that shit.

Ween 2009.07.10 Portland, Maine

The sun was out, the air was cool, and we were going to see Ween. A long time fan, I was more than excited to see them back in the town in which I call home, Portland, Maine. I got out of work at 3pm and went straight home. Simone and I hung out in our yard, and consumed a few cold beers, which were delicious. We cabbed it into town where we got our tickets and ate at the dogfish head, which is a short walk away. We met up with my friend Mike, who drove up from Boston. We kept running into people we knew everywhere we went. It was fun. Upon entering the venue, I ran into two good friends who I don't see enough, at the same time. It was great to kind of talk to them. I have to admit, I was a little drunk at this point. After buying a sweet print of the poster from the show, we found our spot for the night- the VIP section near the front of the stage. Was it worth the extra $15 per ticket charge? 100%. Everyone up there was super cool. I even had one dude tell me not to slouch because he was tall enough to see over us. I had extremely high hopes for this show, and was not disappointed. The band took the stage about 10 minutes after we got up there and with a ferocity I had not been expecting, proceeded to rock the hell out of the joint for the next 2.5 hours.

Piss up a Rope was a perfect opener. Opening with a Dean song got the place pumped and it was clear how into the show everyone was going to be.
The Golden Eel is one of my favorite songs, and was played quite well.
Flutes of Chi was unexpected- in a good way, I love this tune and they don't play it enough.
Johnny on the Spot Captain Fantasy The Grobe - the trifecta of ball busting rock- was overwhelemed by the screaming solos that were truly inspiring. All played to the perfection of rock Ween is known for.
Zoloft was a nice breather, followed by
Sorry Charlie which is so much fun. I love this song. Another Deaner gem.
Learnin to Live was fun, and the first song off La Cucuracha. The crowd loved it.
Little Birdy AWESOME
Laura AWESOMER Can't say too much about this brown mess. other than it was very very sketchy. Gener had some really strange moments.
Even If You Don't was standard, but is a good song, and sounded great.
Wavin My Dick in the Wind pretty good, Claude was KILLING his solos.
Freedom of 76 was perfect. I have never seen this song live before, and was quite suprised how fucking awesome it was. I love it and was wondering what they were going to pull out next.
Woman & Man was possibly the high point of the show for me. I was completely zoned out to Deaner, and he was playing like his life depended on it. Just fucking tearing up the carpet with this one.
I Don't Want It was a welcome song after getting my face melted off.
Pork Roll Egg & Cheese - fun
Your Party also fun.
Roses are Free- crowd loved it, pretty standard version.
El Camino- I was not expecting this, but damn, was it ever awesome... followed by
Buenos Tardes- shit yeah! what double shot! Dos bier bitte.

At this point, i was pretty excited to hear just one more song, but we were treated to 6!

Encore:
HIV Buckingham were tight and sweet.
Honesty was strange and brown as shit. They played it twice, and then teased My Life.
Sketches of Winkle was ROCKING,
The Mollusk had some nice improvised talk from Gener that I would love to hear, cause I couldn't really understand. It was a great way to end on a happy note as we left into the world.

All in all, I don't think the show could have been much better.

I would say it's probably the best they have sounded. The club was perfect for them. This was my third show at the venue and by far the best. The first time I set foot in the place, I said to Simone, "Wow this place would be perfect for Ween to play, too bad they never will cause it's too small." Never have I been so happy to be proven wrong.

After the show, we hung out in the alley next to the venue and met Gene and Glen who both signed our sweet ass poster. Waited till about 130 for more of the band, but no one else came out. The staff could have let us in after an hour of waiting to get a signature, but they wouldn't.
Awesome Show!

Gear Update

I am going to be doing some solo gigs soon. In order to make them more awesome I purchased a new piece of equipment. It is the Boss RC-20xl looping station. I traded in some stuff i don't need and only ended up having to pay $70 out of pocket for it- list is $250. This pedal is pretty amazing. It has 16 minutes of looping awesomeness, and you can create and manage different phrases while performing live. It's going to take a while to get used to but I'm sure it will be awesome.

I also got an MXR Dyna Comp compression pedal- it does the subtle job i need it to.

Here are the updated boards:
Acoustic:


Electric:


On another musical related note, I have decided to no longer play music with the Grumps. The sole reason is that the schedule is just too time consuming. It was a hard decision to make, but I was feeling exhausted after only a few weeks of regular playing out. I wish them all the best.

parti

Fireworks are fun, but hard to photograph.

Lily is a disco/rave kitty. But Eddie would rather sleep.

A Morning Crow

This morning, I was coming into work and I saw a crow eating something. As I got closer, it looked like guts of an animal or maybe a clam or mussel. It could have been trash, I don't really know. If I had a twitter account, that's what I would post about. It was disgusting.

Connected

I went to my favorite coffee shop in Portland today, Maine's own Coffee By Design. As I arrived another patron came in through the other door and was served before me. The 10-15 second delay was a little annoying. On the walk back to work, I saw a beast of a seagull land on a building 10 steps ahead of me. This masterful creature must have been full of crab and oyster, as he proceeded to take the largest bird shit I have ever seen. It was like a parking space line. All of a sudden, I wasn't so annoyed about being second in line for coffee.

Another zombie dream...

Yet another zombie dream...
Okay this one was a little strange. It was more of a video game, but still very intense nonetheless. It started off in Geron's old apartment in Hartford, but Geron was an old man. I had to initiate some things in order for zombies to come, but soon it had been done and we were on our way. There were many people banding together, and riding on large dirt tracks on snowmobiles. Yeah, this was intense because there were very scary zombies, but I think it was because I watched Gangs of New York for the first time last night (it was awesome).

I Love Fishing!!!

New Scoot

Lily loves the new scooter. She wants to go for a ride.

Where is my keys?
We picked up about 15 grateful dead albums and two scooters at yard sales last weekend. pretty epic. Plan is to sell one of them and get another model similar to this one- "Green Boy."

Phish Fenway Park Boston Review

There is a new kind of Phish fan, no longer as much trustafarian, as it is young self entitled male stoner assholes. I did not like how the band catered to the terrible crowd at Fenway- playing 70% songs I (along with most older fans) could care less about. But it was still a Phish show, and the other 30% of songs were pretty spectacular....

After wandering around Boston for several hours, my girlfriend and I went into Fenway and experienced the first of many, many long annoying lines. There were so many people just trying to get in it was obnoxious. Once we got in, the aisles were full of idiots just standing there, not sure where they should be, which was holding everyone up. Once we found our seats, I went to go get us beers and use the bathroom. I should have forgotten about the beer, as I missed the stage announcements. Once the crowd cheered for phish, I ran out and caught the national anthem from the aisle. I didn't really want to pay $8.75 for a 16oz beer anyway. Complete bullshit on the part of Fenway Park management, they should be ashamed of themselves. for being so unprepared. No ushers telling people to get moving, and the bartender was pouring beer individually, instead of just continuing to pour tons of cups and have someone serve them. Just one fine example of the caliber of characters we would encounter the rest of the show.


The show finally starts and the band opens up with- Sample in a Jar. WTF. Sample? You have to be kidding me. We have been waiting for years to see them and they open up with a set killer. Wow. Lame. Who cares if they played it very well, it's not a hard song, and they are professional musicians, it should be played well. The only good thing was during the solo, a rainbow opened up behind the stage and field as the rain had passed. Anyway, after that, they brought my hopes up with Moma Dance, which was funky and fun, but then crushed my hopes with a Chalkdust. This song can go either way for me, I generally like it, but it started out slow and never really took off. Then Ocelot. A new song that was okay, but it's new. Stash finally brought some rocking to the house, which was nice. It was a great version of this song. One of the few highlights of the set for me.

(I should add at this point that the people behind us were young, and for the most part cool, but they kept singing along loudly, and saying things like "Trey is gonna tear it up" and "this is so amazing!" It was incredibly annoying, and kept me from really getting into the show.)

After Stash, I'm really hoping for something that will get me back into the show, like Harpua, with an excellent story about Jimmy's first game at Fenway park, or maybe a ripping Tube, Sloth, Carini, or Gotta Jibbo. What do we get? Bouncin' Around the Room. What in the fuck? Does anyone even like this song? All the kids are singing along, poorly, and I am wondering if they will be able to recover this set. Thankfully, they do, sort of. Poor Heart was okay, Limb by Limb was great, Velvet Sea is a sleeper, but it was nice, and the last three songs kicked major ass. During Down With Disease, some asshole comes up to me and tells me that we are in his seats. I say we are not, and have been here all night. He says that these are his season ticket seats. I tell him its not a baseball game. He demands to see my tickets. I wanted to break his nose. I show him my seats and ask to see his tickets. He pulls them out and I laugh and tell him he's not sitting here, he's waaaaay over there and point. I had tried to take this with a grain of salt, but I was pretty bothered by it. So if you were the one trying to get into field box 74 row F, go fuck yourself. By this point, I'm feeling really let down. I can't get into the show because the kids behind us are so loud and invasive, despite how awesome the DWD is. How can I get back on track? With a DESTINY UNBOUND!!! HELL YES!!! I love this song, and all the kids didn't know it so they went to get beers. Too funny. They missed the best song of the set. Zero was decent and the solo at the end had me going. I was finally feeling a groove.

SET ONE HIGHLIGHTS: Destiny(!!!), DWD, Stash, Moma

Set Break, there was a guy with a bloody face behind us sitting down and blocking the aisle. He was an older man, probably an old dead head. Apparently he got into a squabble over something petty, and ended up getting knocked to the floor, and getting a concussion. Earlier he had said to Simone to stay in the section, it's not worth leaving for beer because the lines are too long. We should have listened to him. Without getting into details, some asshole decided to give my girlfriend a hard time in the beer line, accusing her of cutting the line, calling her very bad names. This kind of behavior is unacceptable! I was looking for her, and so help me if I had found her I would have undoubtedly beat his ass, and probably have gotten kicked out. We finally met up after the set had started, and made our way back into the venue. It took forever to get to our seats, and we had to kick people out of them. ANYWAY...

I'm pretty upset at this point, but the Tweezer was pretty out there and funked up a little. I was feeling the new song, it kind of put me in a better mood and the people behind us weren't saying much at this point. The Bathtub Gin was awesome. I liked the Hampton version and was hoping to hear something like it, and was not disappointed. It was excellent. I like that Trey is letting the audience sing the "love to take a bath" line. I was not really excited for Bowie, but the kids behind us sure were. Jesus, why in the fuck do you need to sing along with that song, it only has like 3 words. It was decent, long, well played. I'm not a huge fan of this song, but it did not turn me off. I wanted to hear some more songs. Time Turns Elastic begins. I was okay with this one but it's LONG and clocked in at nearly 17 minutes! Wow. That's intense. These are really the words to this new song song:

"I'm a submarine. Submarine sinks below the ground"

Maybe I'm the only one, but I would rather hear fourteen 5 or six minute songs with a couple of long ones for good measure. Basically what happened at Hampton. Songs like First Tube or Possum, or Rift or Horn or NICU in lieu of these long songs. After that, Free was nice, and Curtis Lowe was awesome to see live. I hate Lynerd Skynerd, but that song is great. When they started YEM, I was a little bummed out. I was really hoping to hear Harpua with a something (Cracklin Rose) tossed in there for good measure. YEM is one of those songs that I like, but only managed to feel it about half way through. Mike's solo was amazing. Thanks Mike. Okay, so that ends and we get a standard Cavern-GTBT-Reprise encore, but it had some good energy, so that was nice. Cavern was pretty decent, and GTBT was really great.

As I left Fenway park, I realized that the scene may not change, but the people do. It makes me sad, but I guess that's just the way she goes.

Also There was nitrous everywhere. You people doing it are idiots, and you people selling it are balsy as fuck. Saw no less than 5 tanks getting busted up, and watched as a cop opened a valve and let er rip, instantly freezing it to the ground. We even saw a rouge cop decide to take on the nitrous mafia all by himself. Dressed in full riot gear, we watched him start grabbing peoples balloons, and saw him grab some kids head and grind it into a brick wall. It was fucked. As much as I love the Pats and the Sox, There are aspects of Boston I really can't stand.