Holy cow! Is tomorrow Friday already?
Indeed it is.
This is one of those weeks where I’ll manage to have my 40 in prior to lunchtime tomorrow (heck, prior to second breakfast) and it wasn’t because we were doing the fun thing where the fun patches had to be installed on the fun systems using the fun process. We had to install the cruel patches on the cruel systems using the cruel process. While people asked “I know that we agreed to the lab being down for a couple of days, but could we just use the system in the corner?”
As such, I think I will get a bottle of something on the drive home tomorrow to enjoy with a pizza. Saturday, I may find myself batching it during the day (which means Costco, most likely) before going over for The Final 4th Edition Gaming Session on Saturday night. And Sunday, sweet Sunday, will be devoted to *NOTHING AT ALL*. Or, technically, laundry.
So… what’s on your docket?
New York and 2 Broadway shows!
TWO?
Which ones?
Peter and the Starcatchers tomorrow, Book of Mormon on Sunday.
How’d you get tickets to BoM? AND WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU WERE IN NEW YORK?
Busted.
Ditto. Dude, am I pissed! I owe this guy like a bar’s worth of drinks as it is – i’d like to stop having to accumulate interest on that!
Arey you inNY?
My sister in law is a Broadway producer (Peter is her show) and she pulled strings for BOM.
Are you in the city?
Do you pay ANY attention, Tod? I’m about 45 minutes northwest of the city, but an easy trip in. Free tomorrow if you are.
Hasa Diga! May you get at least one of those songs stuck in your head. I am jealous. I’ll be painting my kitchen.
Peter and the Starcatchers
Did these ever get recommended during our discussions of books for teenagers? Because they should be.
Jealous with out even knowing which ones
Pool party tonight and tomorrow 🙂
Hey! How fabulous was the past week or two? Tell us!
It was great! the wedding was beautiful I started crying as soon as I walked down the aisle
but managed to pull it together for the ceremony. There are a few pictures on my face book page more to follow. His ten year old son made a long rambling toast that included something along the lines of “my dad met Anne and she has slept in his bed every day since” We do have it on video and the older daughters are threatening to put it on youtube
That is the most space awesome wedding toast ever. I plan on stealing it for future weddings.
changed my gravatar to a wedding pic don’t know how to embed images
Steal away he was the hit of the reception
Send me a friend request! I wanna see wedding pics!
Me too!
Pat sent you a request. Tod I couldn’t find you. Friend me I am Anne Murray in OKC
Really? Boy, we need to stop using that South Park quote when ever we talk about Canadians.
Request sent.
Oh my goodness, Anne, you look wonderful in your gravatar photo.
Thanks Mary!
Space awesome, Tod! Enjoy the city!
Starting a Pathfinder campaign on Sunday.
I’m currently waiting for the glue gun to finish heating up so I can glue the second floor onto Hannah’s dollhouse.
I dug out camping gear, as we’re going soon, and Kitty verified that the stove works and went out and replaced the whatchamathingamajigger bungee thing that lives inside the tent poles on the tent, as they’ve dried out over the years and ain’t got no spring, baby. Also, bought a new tent in which to sequester the chillin’s. We haven’t been camping since we had kids, that’s just plain wrong.
Tidied some of the garage today. Had a beer. Organized stuff. Piled things. Unpiled things. Put random outliers in containers, emptied containers full of nothing and put something in them, threw the nothing away.
Where are you going camping? The only place I ever camped in So Cal was Joshua Tree. The spouse and I woke up with ice on our pillows, and snow around the tent. 7 years of drought broke that weekend, with more rain in the next three days than in the entire previous 7 years. Went back a month later and the desert was carpeted with wildflowers–we’d never have known and gone if we hadn’t spent that prior miserable freezing night there. But I’m sure there’s lots of great camping places I never got to.
My wife says I lied. We also camped at Lake Isabella. All I really remember is our friend’s dog taking off and dragging the ice chest down the hill. I couldn’t even tell you where the hell Lake Isabella is. I’m assuming there was beer involved.
Ah, hell, Lake Casitas. I know perfectly well where Isabella is.
I remember that storm, I think. 92-ish? I can’t recall the creek in our backyard ever having run for longer than a week, but it ran for months that year.
Brandon, Yep, ’92, I think, ’93 at the latest.
Beach camping this go-round. Car camping, with another family. Forget exactly where, Kitty knows.
I’ve done desert, down by the border, Joshua Tree, Arrowhead. I’m really more of a mountain guy myself. NoCal.
Del Norte county has the best camping, but that may be a little too NoCal for you. I think most people in your area consider it Oregon.
Patrick,
I’m with you. There’s nothing that matches camping in the mountains. Even central Cali, if it’s the Sierra (although there’s some awesome coastal camping in central, too, south of SF).
My plan was to have a long weekend by taking today off, but it turns out there was too much work. WTF? My 3 day weekend turned into a 1 day weekend. 🙁
With my one day off I will attend the county fair and pack for my week out of town on business.
Working for a living’s a bitch, innit?
Yes! Perhaps I should marry for money ;). I would miss the glamorous working class life though.
Saturday I’m going to a real-for-sure barn raising. Just a small barn (20 x 30), but my friend cut all the lumber from trees on his property and had a sawyer cut them mortise and tenon style. Dude’s a craftsman–built his own cabin out there, crafts gorgeous canoe paddles, and recently built a birch bark canoe.
And we’re still working on finishing our kitchen. Next job is nailing in the cabinet trim, then putting up the backsplashes, which I’m making from slate roof tiles that came off our historic local theater.
Beware the English.
Right over my head. Eh?
Just got my face rocked off by Gin Blossoms. Great show!
Oh yea. Sugar Ray was there, too. That was unfortunate.
Thanks to the magic of DVR (and other fortuitous breaks), I can actually sleep in tomorrow for the first time in forever and catch the Open Championship later in the day. Huzzah!
Just got my face rocked off by Gin Blossoms.
Never heard of a case of rosacea that bad.
You know, New Miserable Experience is a minor classic of its kind (power/jangle-pop). The songs Hopkins wrote are just terrific (and inextricable of course from the alcoholism that got him sacked).
That is pretty much all they played. They’re doing this 90’s renaissance tour with Everclear, Sugar Ray, Lit, and Marcy’s Playground, so almost all the tunes were from back-in-the day. This was actually my second time seeing them, as I stumbled upon a free show they gave in Boston about 8 years back. A fun band to see live since you know all the songs by heart, even if you insist you’ve never heard of the band (as some of my fellow attendees insisted).
Sugar Ray? Not so much. And Everclear disappointed, as Art’s voice could barely carry a tune. I don’t know if that was always the case (first time seeing them), but it almost made the music unlistenable, which was a damn shame. But, for a $15 ticket at a venue on the old Woodstock site? Pretty dope experience.
I can’t say I am too familiar with either of the other bands, but Gin Blossoms made some radio-ready songs that didn’t make me lunge to change the dial around that time. Melodic & melancholy. I have a real weak spot for jangle; generally any musical descendant of The Byrds is at least alright by me. And those songs by Hopkins cut like a knife.
I’m sure Hopkins’ story is not uncommon amongst musicians and artists, but it still makes me sad to think of this guy watching his former band, that he co-founded, shoot up the charts on the strength of songs that he wrote. Did whatever dive bar he was in ever have MTV on?
Not that the band probably had any choice but to sack him. When it gets to the point where you’re not sure yr guitarist will show up for shows, what else can you do?
After Hopkins committed suicide, they asked the lead singer of the band for a quote and he said something to the effect of ‘Doug getting kicked out of the band didn’t kill him. Doug’s drinking killed him.’ Which is true, no doubt, and no one else can ever be blamed for suicide but the individual who ultimately makes that choice.
But I wonder how well I’d be able to sleep at night. Just a sad story.
A well-written piece about Hopkins by one of his friends:
http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12123
Not that the band probably had any choice but to sack him. When it gets to the point where you’re not sure yr guitarist will show up for shows, what else can you do?
Seems like they should have been able to keep him as a writer. Writers don’t need to show up on time.
According to Wiki, Hopkins became increasingly difficult to deal with and “disillusioned” with the process, risking their contract at the time.
Thanks for the link, Glyph.
That piece I linked to alludes somewhat to this. Hopkins was still getting paid every time they played his songs. And he was supposedly still working on his songwriting craft. But ‘writing’ when it comes to prose is solitary, whereas music is collaborative.
It also alludes a little to label pressure; labels want a well-oiled machine (ideally with the fewest possible moving ‘parts’ to collect a paycheck or breakdown) to push, and they probably pressured the other guys in the band (who were probably fairly young & inexperienced, and ambitious) to drop the erratic drunk.
Shades of Bob Stinson perhaps; the themes of Hopkins’ songs are not too far off the Replacements’ template of drunken losers’ tales. And aside from Bob, the rest of the ‘Mats supposedly sobered up, so they at least lived to tell the rest of the tale, even if their art seemingly suffered for it.
whoops that was a reply to Brandon. Glad you enjoyed the piece and the show, Kazzy.
goin’ to a ren faire tomorrow with one of jaybird’s work friends that we’ve known so long she’s become my friend too, and one of her friends, and a coworker of mine. then maybe some gaming, and then sleep, and then it will be sunday. sunday and monday i am intending to mostly read with some light napping. (i have 20 holds in at the public library.)
I am going to a demolition derby tomorrow at the county fairgrounds. Does it get any more red state than that?
Sunday I am going to go see Dark Knight Rises.
Clancy, alas, will be working all weekend and then some trying to get caught up. Just about every day after work she has come home and gone straight to sleep. The upshot is that I don’t feel so guilty with my own activities, the downside is… pretty obvious.
Awesome. Do the do a tough car and truck competition, too? Our county fair’s this week, so after we check out the pigs and calves, I just might follow your lead.
No heavy-duty divisions. They did have a small car division, which was awesome because the cars were zippy and there weren’t as many of them so they could really go at it without being in one another’s way. I recorded it with my camera and spent a bit of the afternoon putting it to music.
That’s *AWESOME*.
Check your email.