July 2003 Archives

So this past weekend I did the following drive:

Thursday night: Andover, MA>Hyannis, MA>Princeton, NJ. For the record, that drive is MA>RI>CT>NY>NJ.

Friday afternoon: Princeton, NJ>Baltimore, MD>Alexandria, VA. Again, for the record, that drive is NJ>PA>DE>MD>VA.

So nine states in two days. Oof. But in reality the drive isn't all that bad. Taking Friday off certainly helped matters, because the Hyannis>Princeton drive was about all I could take. 11pm - 4am, around 300 miles. But after that, it's only 150 miles to Baltimore, another 40 or so to Alexandria.

The BT show in Baltimore was a blast. Got to meet quite a few tapers that I'd only had email correspondences with in the past, and the sound was fantastic - and this was an outdoor festival stage at the end of Mount Royal Avenue in the heart of the arts district. The band on before BT was called O'Malley's March, and I got there with maybe 10 minutes left in their set. Apparently the lead singer is Hizzoner Martin O'Malley, the mayor of Baltimore, and he's got an Irish rock band. The guy's in his late 30's and was wearing a black cutoff T-shirt that read "Drink the Beers of Baltimore". A very charismatic and talented fellow, not to mention politically savvy - the guy brought his six-year-old kid out to sing on the last song. So of course, I'm trying to imagine mayor Menino doing that here in Boston, and all I can conjure up is memories of him introducing Guster as "Gooster". Ah yes, his good friends Gooster. As Guster percussionist/utility humorist Brian Rosenworcel said, "That man sees umlauts in his sleep."

Three of the crowd assembled in Baltimore also taped the show the next night at the Wolf Trap, which is a BEAUTIFUL venue that just can't seem to quite loosen up about taper-friendly bands. I seriously felt like I was there for a night at the opera - people sipping wine from plastic cups and sitting daintily on their chairs in front of wide aisles and applauding every song politely (which is more than I can say for some BT shows, where the crowd is non-attentive and doesn't even applaud at the end of every tune). It reminded me of Ferris Bueller's line: "It's very cold and very beautiful...and you're not allowed to touch anything." The major irony of the situation is that you're allowed to bring in enormous coolers of alcohol, park on the lawn and get fitshaced, but you can't bring in or raise an inch-thick tripod from your seat. Never mind the fact that those coolers could be hiding any number of dangerous objects...we mustn't allow recording. But as my wife mentioned in her blog, it's good to have a laminate sometimes. Just flashed the pass, told them it was ok with the band, and we were in like Flynn (speaking of which, there's another Boston mayor type who I couldn't really see in a band).

Funniest part of the whole weekend was showing up at my friend Steve's before the show in Virginia - he and his wife got a town house about 20 minutes from the venue a year ago, and I hadn't been there yet. That weekend he's hosting some friends from out of town, and when we come in they're all congregated around the table exchanging niceties. Chris and I walk in, say hi, and then turn to Steve and say "So, you have the game on yet?"

Yes, it's Red Sox-Yankees this weekend, and we'd lost a gut-wrenching game the night before, so we were looking for revenge. And before we took off for the show, we got it. Then we got home in time for the rubber match of the series, which also went our way, even though the whole series was rather sloppy - baserunning mistakes, errors, and all games decided by the bullpen. Not how you want it to be decided...but I'll take the two out of three in a heartbeat.

I'm driving to Virginia this weekend.

This fact has yet to sink in.

I think I need help.

And I don't mean with the driving.

Ok...the contents of my bespammed inbox really shouldn't be such frequent blog fodder, but I got a giggle out of this:

  D   9 Jul 21 hren_d@getoutofmyw  (2,498) Fw[4]:Affordable Health 
>>D  10 Jul 22 Cameron Fry         (1,618) No, you didn't email me!
  D  11 Jul 22 Lucas Lawrence      (3,130) Bluestraveler, save mone

I'm so disappointed in Cameron. 20 bucks says he's sitting in front of his computer debating whether or not he should go out.

He'll keep emailing me...he'll keep emailing me until I come over, he'll make me feel guilty.... this is ridiculous, okay I'll go, I'll go, I'll go.... I'll go!

Very baseball-themed blog lately...so who am I to break with tradition. Yes, I realize it's my own tradition.

Before the Sox game last night, we got a rock-star parking space just across from the Star Market on Boylston, thanks to my wife's bright idea of looking for street parking given the fact that we were there so early. As we're pulling out, I casually look to my left, and in the passenger side of the huge Ford pickup next to us is Red Sox centerfielder Johnny Damon. He must have been on his way to meet with his hairstylist because he showed up for today's game in cornrows...not his best look.

So that got me thinking about the brushes with other baseball players I've had over the years...

When I was 12 or 13 my father took me and my brother Matt to a fantasy baseball camp in Reno, Nevada. It was mostly for him, but they had a kids camp as part of it, run by a former outfielder by the name of Nate Oliver, a very cool guy. I think that was the first time I'd ever met any major-leaguers, current or former. The biggest names there were Bob Gibson, who pitched for the Cardinals in the 60's and 70's, and had one of the greatest ERAs ever (1.12 in 1968, which in part prompted Major League Baseball to lower the mounds the next year), Hall-of-Famers Orlando Cepeda and Maury Wills, former catcher John Roseboro, outfielders Dick Allen and Tommy Davis, infielder Ken McMullen and pitchers Dock Ellis and Luis Tiant (who now works for the Sox and is a truly hilarious gentleman). The thing I remember most about the whole week we were there was Dock Ellis poaching a few kernels of popcorn out of my brother's carton while we were sitting watching a game together (the camp was held at a California league park for the local team, the Reno Silver Sox). My brother got so fed up at this encroachment on his territory that he said "Oh, you want my popcorn, huh?" and proceeded to empty it onto the poor guy's lap. It was a fair exchange - Matt gets an autograph, Dock gets butter stains on his pants.

I went to another baseball camp around that time hosted by former Sox catcher Rich Gedman. Some of his teammates at the time showed up but didn't actually participate in the camp - they just lined up for autograph sessions at the end of the day. The big name that year was Roger Clemens (I still have the autograph stashed somewhere at my parents' house; if I knew where it was I probably would have burned it years ago but cooler (more clueless?) heads prevailed at the time). I also remember Sox pitcher Bruce Hurst, who would have been the MVP of the '86 World Series if...well...never mind.

I doubt anyone reading this doesn't know about my whole FANatic episode in '98 where I got to meet Blues Traveler (if you don't, well, I'm surprised my readership has reached that far) but until I actually got to meet the band, the highlight of our trip was staying in the same hotel in Cleveland as the Red Sox, who happened to be in town. We were tempted to sneak out and get tickets to one game of the doubleheader that afternoon but couldn't get away from the camera crew. We were literally across the street from Jacobs Field at a brand-new hotel that had just opened, and as we're standing around our limo out front, I see Tim Wakefield walk by a line of autograph seekers and into the lobby. Ditto Billy Ashley (who I think was with the team for all of six games that year). Then two players come OUT of the hotel, walk up to our limo, and I have the presence of mind to actually remember the name of one of them - Darren Bragg, a second-string outfielder for them at the time. He wheels around, shocked that anyone in Cleveland knows his name, and introduces the guy with him - outfielder Damon Buford. We chat for a bit, they jokingly ask if they can borrow our limo, and we get Damon's cell number and hooked up with tickets to a game in Boston in August. On our way up to our room, we catch a glimpse of Nomar Garciaparra, who has a throng of fans around him, and hop in the elevator with another player who is managing to get by unnoticed. His face doesn't click with me immediately, and I try to play it cool with the following line of genius: "Boy, it must be nice not to get mobbed like Nomar, eh?" Great. Insult the guy by implying nobody knows who he is...and then not know yourself. He kind of smiles politely and nods...and still nothing registers. Finally he gets off and we realize it was their backup catcher, Scott Hatteberg. Oops. Our last encounter with a Sox player in that hotel was running into their closer, Tom Gordon, roaming the halls in his boxers after the game. Thankfully he didn't live up to his nickname, "Flash".

And then there's the most recent run-in, while we were in Florida this past March. We're leaving a spring training game and filing out into the parking lot, and to get there you have to cross the street next to the park. Viv is walking along, stops at the crosswalk, and the driver in the SUV waves her across. She looks again and it's Nomar Garciaparra at the wheel. She spends the rest of the drive back - and the rest of the afternoon - gushing "Nomar stopped his car for me!"

Ok...off to help with some lasagna.

Glenallen Hill once went on the DL from cuts resulting from him smashing a glass table while sleepwalking. He dreamed he was being chased by spiders.

Paxton Crawford once went on the DL after falling out of bed and landing on a drinking glass, which shattered on his back.

John Smoltz once went on the DL from burns he suffered while ironing his shirt. He happened to be wearing it at the time.

Adam Eaton once went on the DL after stabbing himself trying to open a DVD package.

Me, I don't get to go on the DL after hurting my back putting away laundry; I get to walk around and wince in pain all weekend.

Ow.

My desk is a total mess. Yet somehow, in some way, I'm able to locate everything on it at will. Have you ever had this experience? Back when you were a kid, I'm sure one day you'd come home from school to find that your Mom had cleaned your room...and all of a sudden you couldn't find anything. A disaster of epic proportions, to be sure.

Tonight my wife and her friend performed elaborate surgery on our collection of Guster paraphernalia, and proceeded to spread its entrails all over our living room rug. In the middle of it all, it occurred to me that there were two setlists and a Guster gazette in the middle of the tornadic disaster that is my work area, so I walked in, plucked them from their hiding place, and delivered them back to the operating room. And now as I sit back down in front of my computer, I realize what a precarious pile of detritus my desktop has become. A random sampling of my desk, from left to right:

- A Béla Fleck & the Flecktones ticket stub from April 9th, 2003 (great show, by the way - if you're into the SHN thing you can download it from the Live Music Archive hosted at archive.org.
- Three random Blues Traveler analog cassettes (11-20-90, 4-12-94 and 4-30-93).
- A packet of blank address labels that don't really stick too well to packages.
- Scads of blank, written, labeled and unlabeled CDs. I still haven't decided if I'm not counting them out of laziness or out of fear of realizing how many are actually on my desk. I might be able to get away with saying that they multiply of their own accord if it weren't for the heavenly host of bubble mailers that descend upon Viv's poor mailbox at work on a weekly basis.
- One of my business cards, turned upside down, with a listing of the artists who guested with Guster on an encore of "Signs" (yes, the song made famous by Tesla) from 6-29-03 in Pittsburgh.
- My wife's photo of a truck of "New Amsterdam" beer, taken on one of her many insane road trips.
- A note that "THIS IS NOT A BILL" from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. No, it's a notice that you're taking money away from me THAT ISN'T YOURS.
- My college transcript from Middlebury. Try though I might, I can't erase that D in freshman year calculus. Though Carol Haddad, wherever you are, a) guess my lack of calc skillz didn't really hurt my job hunt at all in the field of publishing and multilingualism, and b) thank you for giving me a D when I went into the final with an average exam score of 38.
- A "That's Funny!" page-a-day calendar, which most frequently isn't. Today's joke is rather good, though: "A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. 'You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?' she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, 'I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too." --Jake Johansen" The saddest thing about this is that I actually know that they misspelled the comedian's name thanks to hours of watching the old Comedy Channel back when they actually showed...comics.
- A roll of brown packaging tape. One never can have enough.
- A roll of clear packaging tape. See above.
- The SuperPages for the greater Andover area. I mistakenly thought it was the Yellow Pages, but no...it's the SUPERPages. My mistake.
- Several things I just haven't thrown out yet - a dead battery, a phone number that's already been put into our cell phone, and a dry-cleaning tag. Hmm.
- A tape measure. In case I need to measure things...sitting at my desk...next!
- Tickets to upcoming shows (cool...apparently my desk is "In Stereo, Where Available" - tickets on both sides!

In the middle there's about a square foot of space which encompasses the entirety of my ability to move my mouse. Which I think I'll do right now.

>>publish!<<

Regular readers may be dismayed to know that I was unable to collect the $5,000 mentioned in my previous post. Guess I'll have to keep working.

The trip to Red Rocks was ridiculously fun. If you've never seen a show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, do yourself a favor and go see your favorite band there. Or your second-favorite band. Basically, anyone except John Tesh, which is unfortunately how most people know Red Rocks, from some special concert he gave there. I'm of the opinion that nobody should be familiar with anything solely because of John Tesh. We've finally managed to rid the rest of the world of Celine Dion and confine her to the greater Las Vegas area - sort of like a nuclear containment unit, I suppose. Ok, so that was random.

So I'm taking a temporary respite from the road-tripping lifestyle this week and enjoying some time at home. Taking in local shows (caught the Jeff Coffin Mu'Tet last night at Johnny D's in Somerville...fantastic show), eating some local food (i.e. stuff we make ourselves instead of eating on the road - had a nice barbecue for my wife's new bowling league the other night, where I apparently mastered the art of "not burning stuff") and enjoying the local nine - we've got Red Sox tickets for Saturday's game and I'm looking forward to it. We missed our game in June (thanks to the generosity of my friend Chris' family, Viv and I have made a habit of buying a pair of tickets for each month of the baseball season out of their season ticket package) so it'll be good to go back.

While we were up at my parents' place last weekend we laid the foundation for another series of baseball stadium visits. Now that we kids are out of school (and all gainfully and permanently employed, no less! Congrats to my brother Matt for landing a full-time job!) my parents have resumed their traveling ways. Earlier this summer they took a circuitous route to see ballgames in Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati. The plan of attack for next year is Milwaukee, Minneapolis, both Chicago ballparks, Kansas City and St. Louis. Viv and I are going to have some catching up to do - between the two of us we've been to Fenway, Camden Yards, Safeco, and...um...is that it? Yikes. We've been to a few minor-league parks (Hadlock Field in Portland and the one in Trenton whose name escapes me) as well as three spring training facilities (two in Arizona and of course the Red Sox one in Fort Myers, FL). We were planning on going to Coors Field in Denver while we were out at Red Rocks, but a sprained ankle put the kibosh on that plan. Turned out to be a good thing because they had an escalator accident/incident that sent a few dozen fans to the hospital. So one sprained ankle probably spared us from another. Odd...