JKLO ZEP SET!!!

ok, you all know i have a problem with hyperbole...

but, seriously, folks, this show was OUT OF THIS WORLD!!! if robert plant had a younger (and better looking) sister, she'd be jen kearney for sure.



the set list: (and how stupid is a guy who grabs the prize at the show and doesn't get the band to sign it???)

immigrant song

houses of the holy

ramble on

what is and what should never be

kashmir

out on the tiles

the ocean

AND!!!

a medley of nobody's fault but mine, whole lotta love, and dazed and confused

carl johnson had it all going on, and every solo down.



claire finley rocked jpj's moustache like jpj never rocked it, and caught the grooves of every single one of the base lines to make you want to cry



and, i swear, i have never been to a show when so many random members of the audience said to so many other random members of the audience "holy shit, that guy is AWESOME", and, you know, pete maclean surely was



it was a pleasure and a privilege to be front and center for the show. i ran out of beer halfway through the set, and there was NO WAY i was going to miss a moment of it to reload. (plenty of time for that after, ya know?) rumor has it that carl had some sort of recording device on premise, and i don't care if it's otherwise inaudible, this is something you tell people about for decades that you have, if you ever become lucky enough to have it. carl, i'll offer to trade photos, car washes and odd animal parts from the butcher section of the battambang market. (he swears he likes everything). name your terms.

the not so easy button

one thing i can tell you today is that stapleseasyrebates.com isn't. should you leave a store blithely assuming you can easily apply for your rebate with them, don't be surprised if you find out later that you were misinformed. apparently, they try to coordinate between you and all the actual manufacturer's rebate programs, which is a laudible goal, but the net result can be a great big epic fail should the data you supplied to them to supply to the manufacturer have a glitch in it somewhere. worse yet should the glitch actually be part of "stapleseasyrebate" system itself, because then you can generally be the proverbial s*** out of luck. "i'm sorry, we have no record of your purchase anywhere in our system".

for their part, the guys at the store in nashua are trying to help, but they can only go through the staples center (i can't bring myself to type "easy" anymore) and that just brings us right back to where we started.

the other option is to try to contact the manufacturer directly, but, geez, we already know that staples created a whole bureaucracy around the fact that these people are notoriously difficult to deal with, and there you have it.

i have an idea, though. if a company is so all-fired sure that their rebate system is so GD easy, they can hand me the $50 right up front, and rely on that system themselves to get paid back.

THAT would be easy.

one last baseball post

ok, someone please tell me WTF is up with fox sports and their repeated infliction upon america their literally unbearable broadcast team.

i don't like basketball much at all, as careful readers of this drivel may recall. but i figured if i conditioned myself with 2 1/2 hours of professional choreography from da gahden, (otherwise known as the nba and celts bball), then i might be able to tolerate an hour of ny/philly baseball afterwards. but, no, it is not meant to be.

first of all, at 9:45pm, ESPECIALLY during a pitchers duel such as would appear was happening tonight, one might reasonably expect a game advertised to start telecasting at 7:30 would be on to the 7th inning, at least. but, as john belushi would say, NOOOOOOOOOooooo, why should any of us be so lucky? instead, it's somewhere in the middle of the 6th, and tim mccarver is blathering his alcoholically-dulled inanities in his highly-imitable way, and as to make anyone who thought they once loved baseball feel like taking a baseball bat to their TV set instead. and then we remember it's been the same every year since we can even remember, and it feels like nothing so much as having your lunch money stolen, and then heading back to the schoolyard with a fresh pocketful so you can have the experience all over again.

ugh.

not me. not tonight. i can bank on emails in my inbox in the morning from either my ny friends or my philadelphia friends, and that'll have to be enough. in fact, to help me sleep better and with a smile on my face, i'm planning to forward the ones i get to the people from whom i don't get, and let them take it from there.

ahhh, the beauty of a series one simply cannot lose... (that is, providing you don't actually watch any of it).

hey, fox, could you PUH-LEEEEEEEZE have mercy next year and either don't bid on the series, or at least pick some people to talk about it who aren't unbearable? please?

supporting the arts

sometimes, whimsical doesn't even come close to describing something that can't be described in any other way.

i should start by saying that melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course) have been one of the singular joys of my single (i.e. divorced) life. you know, how when you spend 20 years always doing what you think someone else might want, and then you figure it all out (finally) that nobody was getting what they wanted? well, a couple of years ago in a basement bar in cambridge, i came face to face with what i was missing, and its soundtrack was melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course). i'll spare you the corn, but lets just say the music made me happy, and continues to do so each and every day since. (and i own the ukuleles to prove it).

fast forward a couple years, and discover along the way that you're not the only person who feels this way. no, you'll never be as cute as the little red-haired girl who loves 'em as much as words are able to say, but when you see the joy in someone's face like you feel inside, you can't help but be swept away by that feeling, and by them, and the music, and everything that goes with it.

so it is that jess houlihan has fallen in love with the music of melvern taylor, (and his fabulous meltones, of course), but she's done me and the little red-haired girl oh so much better, because she's putting it all to music. melvern's music, to be exact, and a ton of it. "Love Songs For Losers - The Rock Opera" is jess' homage to how it makes a person feel, and she's putting her money, her time, and her all, where her heart is. how can one not be moved by even just that?

anyway, jess is putting together a benefit show to beat all benefit shows, (jen kearney, frank morey, thunderpants johnson's hillbilly orchestra, and, of course, la piece de resistance, melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course) which, for $10 in advance, or $15 at the door, is going to give you more better music in one beerhall than you've ever had in your life before, with the possible exception of dee tension's halloween masquerade band ball this friday night, but more on that later. and it's all going to help make jess' labor of musical love a reality this coming may at the merrimack repertory theater.

so what else is there?

i happen to have inside information as to an opportunity that every lowell music and art lover is going to want to get in on. no, you can't have the original oil, because it's rumored that sir bob nash (yes, that sir bob nash, impressario extraordinaire of wonka sound, and brushwacking backbone of melvern taylor's fabulous meltones got to the artist first. but linda mccluskey, nee of lowell, now of paris, and artiste extraordinaire of the most remarkable street scenes of lowell that you'll ever see, (and don't miss her exhibition at the whistler museum this coming january!), has taken pity on the melvern fandom and made an extremely limited number of prints of said same oil painting, carefully and personally numbered in pencil in the margin 1-10, and generously made arrangements for jess to raffle off the last one, and possibly the most remarkable and valuable one, since i'm sure, if you buy a ticket and win it at the benefit show, you could get melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course) to autograph the back for you, or even the front if you preferred. here's a link to her entire series of music paintings, and, you'll notice, front and center, or, actually, top and left, the one that has to be the greatest of them all. melvern taylor (and his fabulous meltones, of course) live at TOAD in cambridge, where they are most every other thursday night, including tomorrow. click on it to see a larger image. i happen to have one of the other nine in my living room, and the color and the mood are, well, as i said before, remarkable. you are going to love this print.

so here's how you can support the arts: yes, you can buy your ticket to the benefit for the sixth of november. yes, you can buy as many raffle tickets as your scheming strategic heart knows will be sufficient to win the print. but, and this is the most important part right now, if you or anyone you know happens to know how to cut a mat to help this print fit into a standard frame (i.e. outer dimensions 18" x 24", and inner dimensions a little less than 14" x a little less than 21") that would be MOST HELPFUL. jess is doing so much herself to make her vision come to reality. she's picking up returnables at your place so you don't have to take 'em to the return center yourself, and putting every nickel into her donation can. she's arranging sets and singers and musicians and everything else. and you can help make the raffle more successful, if you can help get that beautiful print into a frame in time for the show on the 6th.

know anyone?

support the arts!

with cheese

an alert reader correctly pointed out that i misused the word "erstwhile" in the previous post. actually, i'll claim to have misused it on purpose in a vain attempt (vain in two different senses of the word) to dis a guy whose "common sense" is smarter than yours and mine, but, of course, that extra common sense bone has not yet proven itself to yield its owner unelectable, so, even at best, i was jumping a very balky gun. and he's most likely correct when comparing himself to the incumbents he's running against... but it's fun to have fun with words, no?

this all came to me while rearranging a package of potatoes au gratin in my freezer a moment ago, and marveling at the sheer brilliance of renaming something originally "with cheese", to that very same something, only, "au gratin". so french! so haute cuisine! (don't you just love that the best english translation for "haute cuisine" is basically "high-class cooking", which successfully conveys the sarcasm that ought to have been present in the original expression in the first place?) run a restaurant and want to serve a little plain meat? hey, why don't we sprinkle a little pepper on it and call it "au poivre!"

where was i?

i hold the kind of job where most folks doing it can best be described as "obfuscators". (oh, we're so far beyond "new and improved" that you'll never be able to catch up). we are the people who "position" things, ("spin" being so passe, and for the politicians besides), and who can always come up with a $10 word to replace one that actually describes what we're talking about. (and we don't even worry about whether or not it's actually a word). we shift paradigms in order to incentivize.

if you have the time, and you want to have some fun, watch this youtube clip of some otherwise articulate people trying to explain "cloud computing", (yes, i know, and, you know, this was from a symposium at stanford too), and then this one recording larry ellison (ceo of one of the largest software companies on the planet) talking about the very same thing. larry's bit is, to those of us who work in these mushroom farms, priceless. doesn't matter that he runs the competition. at least he gets that much of it.

and, when you think of it, "cloud computing" is, simply put, software (and hardware, yeah, i know) "au gratin".

et voila.

oh, you knew it wouldn't be so simple... and you knew i couldn't possibly know at all, let alone better...

i am corrected by a very polite correspondent (i.e. one who doesn't prefer to point out my ignorance directly in a comment, regardless of how completely i deserve it) that "au gratin" does not actually mean "with cheese". (rather, it apparently means "with browning", though babelfish couldn't help me with that, hence, the bogus guess "with cheese"). "with cheese" would be, actually, "au fromage", which i actually think i used to know, and i think the greater point has to be that the best part of obfuscation is that you don't even have to know a damn thing about which you speak in order to play the game.

"au gratin" it is.

know better

lots of people know better. they know better than you or i. they know better, but they do things anyway. they know better that friend that you were talking about. know better.

ben opara, earnest and erstwhile candidate for city council here in lowell knows better than you or i. ("common sense", he keeps repeating). the newenglander mentioned in a comment to my last post a NYT piece the day before by david brooks entitled "the fatal conceit", that cited statistics that 94% of college professors believe themselves to be better-than-average teachers, and that 90% of drivers consider themselves to be better-than-average drivers. (i'm guessing ben must have both a doctorate and a drivers license).

as for knowing better but doing things anyway, all i can say is that i must know better than my doctor what's right for my ailing knee, because, though i knew better than to get back on a soccer field too soon, i did it anyway last night, and, what do you know, but i and my knee did just fine, and it's still in one piece. for asterisks there's the fact that the game had been forfeit even before we started because there were a raft of players even worse off than i last night, so we couldn't field a full squad, and the resulting match was extremely low key, friendly, and just for fun. there's also the asterisk that i know i'm a smarter-than-average patient, so i would never do anything to jeopardize my recovery (anyone rolling their eyes just yet?)

look, i know i'm not supposed to, that it's not smart, that i ought to respect the advice of someone who deals with these rehabs every day, and not just twice in their life. but, on the other hand, i *have* been through this before, i *have* been aces on my personal PT, including stretching and strenghtening and all that, and i *have* the experience from the last one to know what can and can't be done on an arthroscopically repaired knee three weeks after the arthroscopy. i could have put two balls into the net that would have required the kind of sudden, twisting movement that i know better than to try, so i didn't. i also could have defended a couple attacks that resulted in goals that would have required the kind of sudden, twisting movement that i know better than to try, so i didn't. my goalie forgave me--he was in net because his calf is all screwed up, and he was doing very much the things he knew better about, too. (ironically, even so, we ended up winning by two goals, and i set up a couple of 'em and pitched a shutout in goal in the second half, so i've got nothing to feel badly about).

sometimes you have to trust what you know.

some things are inevitable

last night at the jam/ldna candidates forum 21 city council candidates respected their opponents and their audience by keeping to the agreed-upon time format. one, however, did not, and i'll let the readership guess if that one happened to be the sitting mayor. oops... gave it away, didn't i. (bet you thought it was going to be rita, though, didn't you).

actually, full props to rita for bringing her full self to the forum. her number one point? she may not agree with anything you believe, but she's going to do it her way no matter what and that's just the way it is. isn't that what elected representation is all about? oops... there i go again.

the highlight of the evening, of course, was the final question where the long line of candidates was given an opportunity to play "what if you could vote" on the andy sheehan firing. (oh, i'm sorry, mr. kazanjian--he wasn't fired, the funding for his position was eliminated under totally unrelated circumstances). every single one of the challengers--every single one--raised their hand to say they would not have voted to eliminate the assistant to the city manager. not one sided with the dumbfounded and red-faced gang of six sitting at the dais next to them. (KMLEMC--Keep Making Lowell Elections More Competitive--Kazanjian, Mercier, Lenzi, Elliott, Mercier, Caulfield--remember the names so you can forget them on election day).

there was also opportunity for the audience to applaud mention of the extra-legally cancelled primary election. it still amazes me that six incumbents can cancel a legally-required election for their own private gain, and get away with it. patrick murphy made the best point of the night when he observed that those same six, crying poor-mouth over a $40k election already covered and paid for in the present city budget, are pretty ridiculous sitting mute on a $400k meals tax that is being used to make next year's budget look balanced, when its really so far out of whack that the elimination of the assistant to the city manager position doesn't even begin to cover the shortfall. (ok, i added the anecdote about the assistant to the city manager, but the 40 vs 400 disparity is patrick's point, and i think it's a great one). the bald political chicanery is astounding to me, too, patrick.

no mention, of course, of councillor kazanjian's business's corrupt business practices, (he's pulling the gonzalez--"i don't recall"), though he's quite adamant that as councillor he can take full credit for all the good things happening under his watch, while as businessman all the bad stuff was somebody else's fault.

overall, i was disappointed in the overall quality of the candidates. ben opara's conceit to have better common sense than you or i is more than a bit off-putting. even worse, several others made it sound as if all the people living downtown are our real problem, since we need more business here. yet those rocket scientists never responded to the frequent points made by the jam/ldna respresentation that there is a disproportionate number of low-income residents here. i would have hoped an intelligent candidate (are there any?) might have understood why the businesses that are here don't yet have the economic base upon which to thrive, and we need to have more people moving in, not less, but, yeah, let's stop letting all these residents fill up the parking garages, so the businesses can all move in and open their doors and wait for all the residents to come in and buy things... and seriously, but wtf, the president of jambra believes the same thing, and i have no idea what her problem is with letting people who live in a place actually park their cars there. my other disappointment was how empty the platitudes about extending recycling services to downtown residents were. "wouldn't it be nice to provide space is the parking garages" was the best they could do, and nobody saw fit to criticize gunther wellenstein's indefensible arguments against it. *sigh*

all agreed that we need more parking, so at least that was settled.

ryan berard and paul belley, along with patrick murphy, were the candidates that i think had the most constructive things to say. others espoused support for expanding our commercial tax base, but, honestly, i thought those others lacked the insight to understand how a mixed-use downtown, such as exists in lowell, needs to achieve a better balance and a larger residential population before commercial businesses can become viable here. (if they haven't been paying attention, us folks who live here can reassure them that nobody is driving in from the 'burbs to buy their lightbulbs at our CVS). ray weicker took the "law and order" position on most things, which, of course, appeals to urban residents, which was fine as far as that goes. i thought candidates wojas and koch handled themselves well, too, though it's hard in such a large field to make the proper kind of impression.

tell me again why it is that the incumbents can cancel the primary on a whim and get away with it???

corey a+

the irrepressible corey b rocked the upstairs at the blue shamrock, otherwise known as gemstones, last night. he goofed the gig dates so the majority of his bandmates from speakermute were in the audience instead of beside him on the stage, (though we did get the pleasure of brian mac singing to back him up later in the set), but he got the mood and the action just right and rocked through a great mixed set of originals, covers, and the ultimate in closers, which would be warren zevon's lawyers guns and money, complete with kickin' amp jumps and requisite werewolf howls. YEAH. all this from one guy and his guitar. kickin'.

those familiar with my friday night itinerary will recall that i began things by heading down to the tsongas arena for the first home game of the riverhawks' young hockey season, (which i celebrated by, and i'm not making this up, sitting in section a, row 1, seat 1, and how often does a guy get to do that, and, if you don't believe me, i've got the ticket stub right here to prove it), and i'm pleased to report that the 'hawks pinned a 5-3 defeat on the colgate raiders in a come-from-behind non-conference tilt with all the lead changes and momentum swings that you'll want to have before your guys win it skating away. (3 unanswered 3rd period goals, and the game-winner was as gutsy a net-crashing will-to-win goal you're ever going to see). hockey east is going to be rockin' for sure this year.

those unfamiliar with how things ended up will be intrigued to know that "serial thrillers" are definitely worth making the time to see at whatever next opportunity might be offered. it's a two-piece, (drums and guitar), playing with the benefit of full bass, keys and backing vocals streamed via the multi-media show that accompanies the (pretty awesome) original tunes. (complete with multiple video monitors and full light show among many other visual treats). paul ortolano can PLAY, and his original tunes are the real deal. "so beautiful" was the one for me, but that's ignoring a whole collection of other gems. great find--go to the site and listen--you'll like more than one, i promise. and, i mean, GREAT find. as in, radio play worthy, and built from the ground up for going somewhere. i'm gonna keep my eye on these guys and tell the story about seeing 'em when, for sure.

which brings it all back to corey b, who was the keystone to the entire evening, and the hook that makes the story. his self-pressed disc, self-packaged self-effacingly in industrial paperboard with a self-cut stamp ("why pay for what you can get for free") and hand-personalized with a sharp-point sharpie on the inside, was the "get" of the night. no, you can't have mine, containing as it does the rare and soon-to-be collectible all over Ebay lyric sheet with the lyrics to tracks 6-10 on both sides, complete with chord progressions beneath, and, tell me, name another artist that does THAT for his audience. (and the best part--the sides, though they contain the same tracks, aren't identical, which is pretty cool, even if it does leave you having to figure out tracks 1-5 for yourself). and the tracks are as clean and spare as can be--just the man and his guitar, self-reportedly doing it all via one take on two tracks, and there's a magic to a song written and delivered just like that. "sadie hawkins dance" continues to stand out, especially all by itself just like this, and i though i sadly searched the entire disc for the one about new england and looking for a new girl, which will need to remain on the gotta-have-it list, i was very pleased that "i won't take back saying that i love you" got the essence of the show opening right there on the disc for me, and that's pretty cool... but the fave so far remains the "demo derby hero", and i'm looking forward to running through it all again in the car tonight on the way into town. and you know, if it wasn't for all this, there's no way i would have ventured back into gemstones after that opening night that almost served to put a dent in a jen kearney carl johnson (don't forget corey b on "alternate keys"!!!) show for the ages, (though nothing can take the shine off of something like that), and no way i would have thought to put "serial thrillers" on my go-see list. but it's all good, because i did, and this rainy saturday isn't so much after all.

i talk about it alot, but where else in the world can you live across the street from all this?

ouch

across the 2008-2009 season, the boston bruins scored an impressive 270 goals. (supported by 465 assists). four men on that team, (marc savard, phil kessel, chuck kobasew and milan lucic), were responsible for almost 35% of those goals. (94 in total, not to mention 133 of the helpers). by coincidence, as of today, two of those men skate or will skate on other teams, (phil kessel in toronto and chuck kobasew in minnesota), while two others are out on long term injured reserve for their various broken bones. (milan lucic a now-surgically-repaired finger, and marc savard a foot).

want to know how i feel about it? i feel great--bad for them, but great. no, i don't expect the team to be threatening the top of the table this year, but i do know that if there ever were a team to love, this is it. the farm team's best will be widely represented every night. those still skating will have to dig deep and give it just that much more. and when savard and lucic return, and when those draft picks acquired in return for the traded players are added in future years, this is going to be one heck of a hockey club. and i'm not going to feel about them any closer than i do right this minute, today, while it all looks the toughest.

go bruins!

twitching

tito francona twitched a few days ago, bringing in his meathead while one of the two best closers in history was dealing on his mound with two outs... (i got more spam from ny friends that next day than i usually get in a month of email).

so it's pretty funny to have watched joe g twitch not once but twice last night, first fielding his DH so that other of the two best closers in history couldn't go 2, and then second pulling his replacement with two outs and nobody on so he could bring in his meathead for the inevitable denouement.

what is it about human nature that compels us to *do* something, even if the tide of events is swelling our way? (especially if?)

i once read a rejoinder from a hairdresser about the high cost of their haircuts when so little hair wound up on the floor when they were done, that the amount paid was for the hair left *on* the head, not the stuff on the floor. i think there are more than a few baseball managers who must have missed the point of that one.

hardest thing in the world to do, when it's all on the line, is nothing.

dharma buns!

here's a very good reason, right here in downtown lowell, to take the time to enjoy your fast food slowly. i've sampled the roast beef and the steak sandwich so far, and the fries, and it's all good. or, more accurately, three o's goood. heck, four o's gooood and an exclamation point!

gooood!

the menu is short so you don't mistake what the place is about--it's not about sandwiches--it's about THE sandwiches. so much care is taken in how the few options are prepared, that you can sit and savor every bite and not worry about the lack of "ham and cheese" among the options. the roast beef is rare and thin and piled high like you dream about, and so aromatic and flavorful that you remember why they invented the sandwich in the first place. i had mine with deli mustard underneath, and "special sauce" mayo over the top of the lettuce and tomato, and it was gooood. even after an hour in the car before being able to eat it, and, yes, i was salivating the whole way.

then, today, i went back for one of the hot choices--the steak sandwich. it's rib eye seared on a grill, and you can taste it just from your nose when you're raising it to your mouth to take your first bite. i also opted for mushrooms, (because how else would you eat a steak sandwich?), and provolone cheese because i've never understood the jersey american tradition. (and don't get me started about the abomination from philly that starts with cheez whiz). i skipped the onions, but they'll be on my next one for sure. the baguette could have stood to be a little bigger, but i'm splitting hairs here. it's a damn fine sandwich.

the fries, well, they get their own paragraph. alex confirmed that they are, indeed, part of the same religion as duck fat fries from portland, (blanched and twice fried), only dharma opts for peanut oil, perhaps because it fries a little hotter, and finishes just that much crisper. (my foodie friend's suspicion, which sounds reasonable to me, though she still says the duck fat fries are in a universe by themselves, and i'd have to say she's not necessarily wrong about that). either way, the potatoes at dharma buns are like a dream inside, with perfect consistency and flavor, and the finish and the light salt are what you dream about. the chipotle mayo for dipping was very tasty, too. so maybe there's room in the multiverse for two unverses of french fries...

so, what's next? i'm thinking i'm gonna go for a burger next. yeah. a burger. fresh ground... perfect from the grill...

and, i've got to say, having 60 flavors of beer to choose from as your "wash it down" option is a pretty cool thing.

two thumbs up!

"the task i must undertake..."

it's all right there in black and white at the bottom of this mess: "the task i must undertake is towering over me like a great big monolith--it is too big to contemplate, so i think i will go and have a little look at the internet".

so this morning's "little look" has step-stoned from melvern taylor on joeg's "droppin' knowledge" radio program to the remarkably deep list of past shows that joeg keeps on the blog site. ("the drop list", natch). who knew!!! i'm only as far as peter lavender, and if it's a 2 hour show, i'm not going to be much further along 'til almost lunch. what a pleasure!

yep, lowell's own audio flosser, host of the sun's music blog, pop-smith extraordinaire and music teacher to the future stars, is right here on the web talking about how he writes and sings songs that make breaking up sound like so much fun to do. (NOT, or, as peter puts it, "the tentative title was 'rust, dust and horse manure--the anatomy of a break-up'"). it's got a bunch of the CD featured, of course, which is marvelous, but also some live gems of just peter and his guitar.

couldn't think of a better soundtrack to my morning of conference calls and powerpoints--thanks, joeg, and thanks, peter.

best place on earth. ;-)

"droppin' knowledge"

joeg graham hosts an afternoon radio show at mit called "droppin' knowledge", the beauty of which this afternoon is that he'll be featuring melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones as his musical guests, in addition to the estimable jess houlihan, who is putting all the rest of MT&TFM fandom to shame by producing a rock opera based on the collected works. it cannot be made to be better than this. wmbr. 88.1. fm. 4pm.

the funniest bit is that, as of this morning when i went to check it out just for curiosity, wmbr's web site is 404. yep, that's right. the radio station at mit, the school that's ground zero for all that's tech, is 404. i'm sure it'll be back momentarily, but you just gotta laugh sometimes.

go melvern!

UML mens hockey home opener

they're 2 and 1 so far on the season, and respected from coast to coast. finally, we get to see for ourselves what the college hockey world is on about when the river hawks take the ice in their home opener on october 23rd at the tsongas arena--right here in beautiful downtown shangri-lowell.

even better, the city has scheduled a morning hangover helper at all the various local city parks, as this year's annual clean-up kicks off on saturday morning that weekend, too.

see you there!

hockey quebecois

one of the more sensitive social subjects when discussing the nhl is the extent to which french canadian style differs from english. the euphemisms you might hear range from "visor guys" to "european", and anybody who knows don cherry knows that european style is, like momma bear's bed, much too soft.

so it's always been iconoclastic for georges laraque to ply his trade in the nhl at the point of his fists, blessed neither with the skates nor the hands to do much else while on the ice. quebecois players are assumed to be like danny briere in philadelphia, (another stylistic oxymoron, but i digress), which would be extremely talented but oft-injured and never by appearing in an actual fight. (the exception proving the rule being patrice bergeron's complete annihilation of josh gorges last year--who knew he was a lefty, indeed).

so the hockey world is buzzing these days about georges laraque's appearance in an octane energy/alcohol drink ad, playing street hockey against the "octane girls". the controversy swirls from the gratuitous t&a to the idiocy of pouring booze and caffeine out of the same bottle, but the big entertainment to me is watching how very hard the camerman and director had to work in vain attempt to make it look like laraque could actually handle a stick, let alone a puck that doesn't even carry a risk of rolling up on end. of course the fantasy is all so very jr high, and the production values aren't much better, too, but you have to go a very long way to find an nhl player who would look more out of his element with a hockey stick than this one.

too funny.

frost on the mills

there's nothing more stirring to me out my window than the sight on these special fall days of the year of frost on the mills. there's not a cloud in the sky, and you can already tell it'll be one of those most beautiful days. it's a pleasure to know that my rehab virtually demands that i spend part of it on a bicycle.

let's ride!

kiss

there's something about wanting to rock and roll all night that befits boys and girls of a certain age. everything else is, well, kinda creepy.

to wit: at the conclusion of kiss' recent appearance on the late show with david letterman, the old man himself waded into the dissipating fog machine fog and congratulated the band on their performance. gene simmons had just stuck his tongue out at least 50 times in 5 minutes, and lifted his feet to show off his platform boots no fewer than 20, and the whole band could not have tried any harder to be exactly what they were 30+ years ago, including their mediocre musicianship, which was, let's face it, never an impediment to their popularity for what they were in the first place, so why should it start to matter now. but what struck me hardest as the thinningly gray haired and bespectacled sexagenarian and recently-outed satyr stood amidst the quartet of absolutely has-beens trying desperately to be again, is that there really ought to be no second acts that are the same as the first acts in american rock and roll lives. think about it--robert plant is beloved to be out amazing the world with his duets with alison krauss amidst many other projects, but we're all still coincidentally grateful that he's no longer doing it in skin tight bell bottoms with spangly shirt open to his hairy navel.

so why is it that network television has to waste even 5 minutes on guys that hardly need a reintroduction? can't we ever see anything new for a change???

kill your television.

U-M-L! U-M-L!

who is the reigning past and still champion of new england collegiate cross-country? yup, you got it right--u mass lowell.

gotta love a sport where it's never individual achievement, but consistency of group performance that leads to victory. UML's best guy, tim guerin, ran 9th, but their final scoring guy, steve o'brien, was only beaten by 30 other runners and remained within 30 seconds of tim, as did jeff veiga and greg wilson, and you can't beat that at a big meet like the one saturday at franklin park.

go river hawks!

like i'm 9 years old again

the '69 sox finished 87-75 and in third place in the AL east, just two years removed from their appearance in the world series. tito francona this year, unlike dick williams that year, still got the boys into the post-season, so he didn't have to suffer the ignomy of being replaced by eddie papowski, but the parallels are there nonetheless. (they led the league in attendance for one thing).

the '69 pats finished 4-10 and in third place in the AFL east. they opened their season with the requisite loss in denver, instead of waiting 5 weeks and until overtime to get it done, but mike taliaferro to ron sellers certainly seems as productive as tom brady to randy moss these days. (gino cappelletti made only 14 of 34 field goal attempts, but no memory remains of how often he was tickling the flags atop the posts while sailing those 20 kicks wide).

the '69 bruins ended one season at 42-18-16, 2nd in the eastern division, and began the next which would see them remain 2nd and slip slightly to 40-17-19 while running the post-season table and skating around the ice in st louis with the stanley cup. phil esposito was repeat scoring king, and prince bobby the repeat norris winner, and boston was, despite the run of celtics banners, a hockey town. ("jesus saves, but esposito scores on the rebound").

yup, just like i'm 9 years old again. the franconaman defies reason to put his meathead into the game while he's got, arguably, the 2nd best closer in history already on the mound and dealing, and the pats let an injury to their left tackle choose their plays down the stretch (off center right for three yards, off center left for no gain...) and give it away in OT. meanwhile, back at the garden, the boys in black shake off 50 minutes of rusty mediocrity to storm back for 3 unanswered goals and skate away with a win.

do not get me wrong. i sincerely love and am not deterred from feeling so while watching the sox when they lose and the pats when they lose, too, despite the verbal face-washing from all my ny friends. these are my teams, and they're as comfortable and lovable to me as they've ever been. (though, please spare me the blaming of the pat patriot helmets patriot nation, because we have a lot of other things to talk about before we'd ever have to go there). i don't watch 'em because i expect 'em to do well, and no true fan would say that they do.

i watch 'em because they're MY teams, and, just like when i was 9 years old, it's the bruins that i love best, which makes this past weekend just fine with me, if that's the way it's gotta be. (and my soccer teammates put another W on the board while i watched, beer in hand, so there's that, too).

i do miss bobby orr, though...

m4 or not m4

that is the question.

back on august 3rd, cliff over at 'right side of lowell' examined the us choices for outfitting the afghan army, between our own m16 and the russian ak47. well, the AP just released their coverage of a "detailed study of the attack [on US troops in the village of wanat in 2008] by a military historian" that found US weapons failing "repeatedly at a 'critical moment' during the firefight", and they just put another log on that fire, to say the least. the next series of quotes from tom coburn can't be far behind.

the question for the afghan quartermasters was expressed as an interest in accuracy as well as durability, and the psychological edge provided by the "black rifles". well, my original comment to cliff was perhaps regarded as a bit flip, but it was sincere--no army on the planet, not least of all our own, is as accurate with a rifle as the swiss, and this has been the consistent case for the better part of a century. observing that our weapons continue to appear over-engineered and under-performing under the hardest conditions, it wouldn't hurt to consider the expertise of the world leaders. and if it's not accuracy that's most important, than there's been nothing to out-perform the kalishnikov when the going gets tough, and it seems pretty stupid to me to land, broken, in between. (which is to say, tom coburn isn't wrong).

but what do i know--i'm just a civilian. i will say that my planned purchase of a demonstration of my civil conscience was just determined beyond any doubt to be an AK. last thing i'd like to hear when standing contested ground would be the impotent clack of a jammed weapon.

"lowell finally getting its do"

it's right there in the headline on page 4 of today's sun.

you know i don't make this stuff up.

quotable

"i wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for i intend to go in harm's way" -- john paul jones

"as tolerated"

one of the curiosities of being injured is all the well-meant advice and admonishment that arrives (mostly unsolicited) seemingly every moment. yeah, i know, i look even more like the old man i am when you see me hobbling around these days, but i have a piece of paper from the doctor ok'ing all weight-bearing activity "as tolerated", and i'm going with the letter of the law here. if i'm doing it, i am, by definition tolerating it, so you can save your admonishments and just stick with your generous expressions of sympathy (sincere, i hope) and awe at how quickly i'm recovering. (doesn't have to be sincere, but i like to hear it anyway). the goal is to be back on the soccer field well before christmas, and i won't get there by lolligagging around.

oh--jen kearney is at the barley pub in dover on saturday, in case you'd like to gawk at me in person. i'd be at the melvern solo show at toad tonight, too, but i have some other plans already, and i can't be held responsible when shows get scheduled at the last minute. ;-)

beer vs percocet

over the past week, since they admonished me not to be popping anti-inflammatories before my surgery, i've been of the opinion that what they really were telling me was to be employing alcohol for my pain management. (everybody else was telling me that i was foolish to have turned down the vicodin scrip, but i digress). well, beer has been serving me just fine in the interim, so i have had no complaints. so now that i'm home from my little outpatient adventure, it's time to consider the question of whether or not i should maintain my loyalty to malt beverages, or dip into the pharmaceutical candy bowl as an alternative. here's the way i see it--beer TASTES good. how can you argue with that?

however, for those of you who might like to come over and watch baseball with the gimp, we don't need to tell the DEA if not all the goodies are being consumed as prescribed. just bring beer. ;-)

j-k-l-o-t-o-a-d

in case anyone was curious how i came to know so much about d-tension's halloween masquerade band ball, i should first explain about my growing and substantial apathy for the national football league and coincidental major-league crush on both jen kearney and carl johnson, not to mention the rest of the lost onion, and, yes, that means you, pete mclean, and especially when claire finley is in the house, which she was last night at toad, (listen to how far i'm getting ahead of myself here), and how, when you go to the best shows, you tend to find out about the best shows.

yes, i've happily found something eminently better to do with my monday nights now that jen kearney and the lost onion are the resident monday night band at toad. their inaugural show last night was fully up to all the billing, and, except for the fact that i'm a little sleepy for my daily dose of international conference calls, it's ALL good. if it's possible, they've refined their cover of lenny kravitz's "let love rule" even more, but it's the jen kearney originals that always make the show. get "year of the ox". put it through your speakers from beginning to end. (lather, rinse, repeat). then come on down to see what it's all about. you might even be lucky enough to hear about things happening on the downtown lowell social calendar.

so, meet me at the dreamer's ball (sorry, gratuitous freddie mercury reference there) october 30th at the old court. but every monday night before that, and after that, too, down at toad. (this is what they write the songs about, people). the best times can always be had by all.

halloween comes on a saturday this year

i'm patiently (ok, not so patiently) waiting for a numbered and signed print of a linda mccluskey original oil painting of melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones (playing at toad in cambridge, as a matter of fact) to come back from the framer, and i couldn't help but take note slash cringe to see all the "halloween comes on saturday this year" retail "please buy something" signs all over the store when i went in to check on it the other day. (no, not ready yet... *sigh*) but, of course, the signs are right, and, as one can only hope when the number one social holiday of the year (sorry, st patties people, but it's true) rolls around when there are a day's/night's cushion on either side of it to ensure maximum festivity.

as only befits the momentousness of the occasion, d-tension is organizing a masquerade band ball at the old court on october 30th, (not on halloween, please fellow babies, take note), and this is one show that simply cannot be missed. first of all, d-tension is now a movie star (look for him in ricky gervais' "the invention of lying") and, second of all, his productions, like the one where melvern taylor and his fabulous meltones blew the power on jackson street not once, not twice, but three times raising the roof where there is none, are must-be lowell happenings even without the social-holiday-of-the-year angle, and, third of all, you cannot dis a rapper who covers dylan (it ain't me, babe) but MOST of all, when jen kearney and the lost onion are booked to do a set of nothing but zeppelin covers while carl johnson is channeling jimmy page (no word if he's going to go all the way with the black jimmy page wig, and double-neck his heritage cherry gibson SG for the occasion) and jen does her very best robert plant like jimmies on your sundae that's on both saturday and friday this year, you just KNOW you have to be there.

i've seen carl and jen do "what is and what should never be" enough times to know that the possibility of that one song alone would get me out for this show. but now we get to dream about all the other gold that they're rehearsing for our halloween pleasure AND get to see our dreams come true, and that's a wonderful thing.

october 30th. the old court. halloween comes on a saturday this year. but friday night the night before is when all the best people are out. see you there!

i can't help it if i'm easy

saturday night in shirley it would have been fair to say i was as over the moon for amy speace as i've ever been about anybody, but tonight it's monday, and my wanderin' heart belongs to jen kearney. (again).

toad. cambridge. 10pm. it's the first of many memorable monday nights, as rumors have it that jen and carl and pete and le bassist nouvelle (is it me, or is the lost oninon and bass players a little like spinal tap and drummers?) are now the resident artistes from tonight until we all stop showing up.

there isn't a better time to be had anywhere in the city, so i expect i'll be seeing everybody there!

amy speechless

amy speace lit up the bull run restaurant last night in a way that will take far more time to describe than i have right now to say. it was one of the most memorable concert evenings... yes, there could be more to that sentence, but the more i try to find words, the more i realize that it's complete as it is. it was one of the most memorable concert evenings.

to grace one of her new songs, amy innocently asked if anyone in the audience would be brave enough to whistle along, and i know it wasn't exactly fair to have been ganged up upon by his entire table to be nominated the way that he was, but amy was eager to let it happen, and peter lavender was in the moment, so to audience and artist demand he riffed a solo whistle on the break that had everyone, including amy, blown away. she literally stepped off the stage after the first turn through the measures, and had to invite him to do it again, and it was, as they say in all the good books, good. more than good. like one of those moments that step out of a life and make you realize that you are a lucky, lucky man.

amy was gracious and bodacious and flirtatious and so ON in the way that she always seems to be--on the note like you're sent reeling to hear, and so soft one moment and so full to make the room feel at the edge of bursting the next. "the killer in me" was even more powerful without the band and without ian hunter, if that's possible. the blondie cover, evoking the one single moment in time when cbgb's made the village a c&w paradise, was beautiful, if that's even a fair thing to say about a song like that. "dreaming". everything new and old all over again, too.

it was intimate, and it was everything you hope it will ever be when you buy a ticket. amy is, i'm sure, already off hobbing nobs with judy collins and the like down in her new digs in nashville this morning, but a piece of her is still filling the rafters there out in beautiful downtown shirley, massachusetts, and for those who were lucky enough to be there, it will make a lifetime of stories of "i was there when".

i'm writing my letter to oprah this morning, explaining to her how her show has never been as good as it will be when she finally invites amy to deliver "the real thing" live and in color.

edited to add a link to the man's memory of his own moment. (i swear that she did say it, too--and i'm thinking the whole room would agree).