http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=594671
Paul posted this great article on the Wolfshack about old beers.
Blog
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Review: Billy Idol and Def Leppard
On Sunday night, Trish, Mike, Vero and I headed out to see Def Leppard (which was rescheduled from March!) and instead of REO Speedwagon and Styx (boo, hiss), we got to see Billy Idol! Awesome. Billy Idol is well known for what I like to call the “Trifecta of Vital Idol Songs at a (White) Wedding”. Any wedding I have been to usually plays at least THREE Billy Idol songs from the following list:
- White Wedding
- Mony Mony
- Rebel Yell
- Dancing with Myself
Billy Idol is the equivalent to AC/DC making an appearance at the DJ booth at a wedding. Well liked.
Anyhow, we are on our way to the ScotiaBank place and unfortunately hear that the show starts at 7PM and not 7:30PM so in the end, we walked into the stadium and could hear the opening number of “Dancing with Myself”. Ah well. At least we only missed one song.
We found our seats at Row 22 (a decent view of the stage) and watched Billy Idol in all his glory. He put on a really good show and I must admit that he rivaled Def Leppard’s performance. Plus I got to see an amazing guitarist perform…Steve Stevens! What a pro 80s guitarist…he had all the moves and all the licks to go along with it.
Billy Idol is in quite good shape for a man over 50. I have never seen abs on myself that looked like his. I wondered if it was a shirt with abs painted on at first (ala Bono in PopMart). Billy did manage to bring out a microphone for the crowd to sing into during Mony Mony which was quite fun.
May I also point out that I loved their drummer for the fact that he would hit the drum head with the stick and let it rebound into the air and then catch it upon its descent. Coolness!
Billy Idol, two thumbs up.
After he left the stage, Mike and I grabbed a few beer ($8.50 a pop for a tall can! Ouch!) and headed to the merchandise booth where Vero picked up a Def Leppard t-shirt. Considering this is her favourite band, it was a great purchase.
Def Leppard came on stage in support of their ‘Songs from the Sparkle Lounge’ album. Like any act that has been around for the past twenty years or more, their show tends to become a greatest hits package and this was no exception. They may have played two songs from their new album and the rest of the show was listening to their Vault – Greatest Hits album from back in 1995. Which is fine by me. They opened up with Rocket and it kept things high octane after that. Pour Some Sugar on Me is always a good tune and they ended with Let’s Get Rocked.
The band was in full rock star outfits except for the drummer who looked like a lumberjack when he stood up. Hey, do drummers usually play in their bare feet? I thought that was different. He was hidden behind the drumkit the entire night so it was a rare treat to see him when he stood up and waved. Perhaps he doesn’t care for the fame any longer? The band was excellent and they are veterans of the stage. Joe Eliott doesn’t have the high vocal range as he used to which makes me realize that I shouldn’t write songs that I know I won’t be able to sing in 20 years time! Billy Talent, I’m looking at you with that comment.
Here’s a set list from earlier in the tour which sounds pretty similar to what we heard. Rock On by David Essex was a welcome surprise (after being introduced to it via the Smashing Pumpkins) and Two Steps Behind was done near the middle of the crowd. I believe their new single…C’Mon C’Mon and Go were also played from their new album.
I loved the show but I’m almost wondering if seeing them once is enough for me. I feel that in the future, I would see the same show again. Unlike Aerosmith last year that just piled on random songs from their entire catalogue that didn’t seem like a Greatest Hits concert.
01. Rocket
02. Animal
03. Let’s Get Rocked
04. Foolin’
05. Mirror Mirror
06. Nine Lives
07. Love Bites
08. (Bass Solo)
09. Rock On
10. Two Steps Behind
11. Bringin’ on the Heartbreak
12. Switch 625
13. Hysteria
14. Armageddon It
15. Photograph
16. Pour Some Sugar on Me
Encore:
17. Rock of Ages -
Happy Birthday To Me
09, originally uploaded by palm0014.
The beauty of turning thirty is to look at what you have accomplished until this point in life. I’ll be honest with you, I think it started to hit me hard a few months ago and I got trapped in the regular “OH LORD, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!” thoughts…
But then I took a different perspective on the whole 1/3 of my life gone and looked back at everything I have accomplished and I’m proud of it. I’ve come a long way, whether it be in the education of my mind, musical ability, entertaining the masses, visiting the world…it’s only the first 30 years of my life and when you think of it, we’re all kids for the first half of it and so it’s only been for the past 15 years that we’ve all really gone out and done something on our own. From those last fifteen years, we’re stumbling along wondering how to get through it and wondering if you should take the path well traveled (arguably society’s foray into having a steady income and living a predictable life with a few odd adventures here and there) or the one less traveled where we seek out adventure first and predictability second.
Uncle Gerry gave me a letter which has stuck to me over all these years. He gave it to me at what can only be called one of the more formative periods of one’s life; the week before leaving your home to go to school in a big city. This letter outlined how no path is wrong, but it’s about finding out what’s the right one for you to travel on. It was inspiring to read this as I started out on a path that is still arguably society’s path and wondered if I would enjoy it or not.
I look forward to the next 2/3 of my life and all the wonders that lie within them. This is a crucial time for me to ramp up my explorations into literature, education, music, travel and friendships. It is the calm before the storm which will eventually come to me in the form of family of my own one day and the subsequent adventure that ensues from that path.
I am proud of everything I have accomplished up until this point and I embrace the turning of thirty years. Bring on all the laughter and the jests of getting old! I can’t wait. I’m in better shape than I have ever been, both physically and mentally and I have a ‘joie du vivre’. There isn’t anything stopping this train of rock n’ roll, existentialism and the ever longing questions of how the heck they get the caramel in the Caramilk bar.
* Can I point out that it’s great to see that I had an Amazing Spider-Man shirt back in 1982 when this photo was taken?
* I’m gone to Gaspe for the week. I’ll update the blog whenever possible.
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Day 2 – Gaspe Trip 2008 August 3
*note my attentive audience*
Well, August 3rd turned out to be my birthday and it was a miserable rotten weather day. I had high ambitions to go out biking, but alas, it was not meant to be.
We made the best of it and played some euchre during the day, and I organized my guitar songs so I could perform that night for everyone. During the day, Uncle Greg explained some key concepts of photography to be (f-stops, zooming, etc.) and while I can say that I can’t remember a thing he told me from that day, it made me think that I should pick up that amateur photography book that Mike has and try his SLR camera out sometime. We tried to snap a shot of a falling raindrop without much success.
I had a lovely birthday dinner consisting of fried bologna. The joke of the night was when Dad had asked for a few pieces to be made extra crispy (just the way he likes it!) and then Aunt Mariette picked the pieces up for herself not knowing that Dad wanted them! There were some good laughs at that.
I ended up receiving an excellent orange cake (my fave! Vero take note!) and everyone devoured it. I also managed to get some excellent gifts from my parents…some fishing tackle and they wiped the debt I owed them over some time. It was a very appreciated gift although I must admit that part of says “Can I not save enough money to even pay back my own parents?!” What kind of person am I?
The most unexpected gift was in the form of my Palmer Platter t-shirt…a one of a kind that Dad was using as his paint shirt! They managed to get the paint out of it and it looks brand new! I was excited to hear this as I didn’t even realize I had left it at home and Dad thought it was an old t-shirt that can be used for other means!The night moved along and I played guitar for a few hours trying to sing the songs that everyone knew. Aunt Lois sure didn’t care for anything she didn’t like and tried to flip my song book pages while I was in the middle of the song! But she turned out to be an excellent singing partner along with Mom for most tunes.
When I stopped playing I managed to make it back to the table and realized that Dad had had his fair share of wine! I didn’t even realize what was going on behind me but sure enough, Uncle Fred’s wine was having effect on a few people that night. It was quite funny and I’m glad that Dad emerged unscathed the next morning. I also emerged unscathed after having a great slumber inside the trailer for the night. Thanks to all for the excellent 30th birthday party!
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Day 1 – Gaspe Trip 2008 – August 2
P1070432, originally uploaded by palm0014.
Mom and Dad arrived Friday night with a gift in tow for my birthday…a tent for Vero and I to use! I was pretty pumped. I had a good laugh when I took a look at it and it was an 8 person tent! We decided to haul it out of the box to see how big it was and it took up the entire backyard! Dad and I didn’t bother assembling it as we knew very well that it was way too big for our needs. The thing was large enough to park the Mazda inside! It even had a front porch! We did end up returning it that night and Vero and I will find another one in the future (perhaps there are sales on at this time of year?).
Before I forget, Vero got me an excellent Chuck Norris t-shirt as well as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which, unfortunately for her, I already had, but I appreciated the thought!). Once I returned from vacation, she gave me a more personalized gift in the form of a collage of the Top 30 Facial Expressions put on by me. It was quite hilarious as she labeled each one with names such as “The “I Need to Pee” Look” or the “I am the front man for AC/DC” look. I shall have to take a picture and post it up some day soon. I wonder where I can put this amazing photo in my house? It shall not be buried in some arcane spot.
Saturday morning, we arose and headed out on the road. Dad had said we would wake up around 6AM but I believe he woke me up at 5:15AM, that bugger! However, I got to sleep until Montreal which was fine. We were towing a trailer with an ATV on it this time around so it was quite the load and the gas consumption wasn’t our friend. I could literally see the gas meter going down as I drove down the highway.
One of the highlights for me was to stop in at Trois-Riveres (or was it Riveres-des-Loups) for some St-Hubert. I love St-Hubert and I learned to love it after many summer holidays to Gaspe. We pulled into the parking lot and ordered ourselves three quarter chicken meals. Let it be noted that one should always look at the menu for any special deals when at St-Hubert. For example, our meals came out to $30+. There was a family meal deal which was essentially the same thing we ordered and it was $23. Then there was also a lunchtime meal deal (The Chef’s Special) which is $6 for a quarter chicken meal but the chicken is a surprise (as in, it’s the Chef’s choice whether you get a leg, breast, etc.) so for the three of us, it would have come out to $18. Caveat Emptor people! We ended up eating on the trunk of the car as we felt waiting in the restaurant would take too long for our 12 hour trip, plus it let us keep an eye on the trailer! We had a good laugh about eating out in the parking lot but I’m glad to be amongst a family who doesn’t mind doing that sort of thing!
The ride down was quite foggy all the way. It was quite surreal. I read through Benoit’s copy of “The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told: Volume 2” which was interesting. I never grew up on Batman so this was my first introduction to him. The stories were the older variety and were quite campy in that in some stories you have Batman battling aliens! We listened to Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, CCR. I managed to smuggle in some Sam Roberts and Matt Mays while I drove during the last part of the trip. The ride through Murdochville was windy road heaven and was an interesting experience while towing the trailer, with thoughts of it snapping off and the ATV going down a cliff. Actually, it wasn’t that bad at all. The Honda Accord has some balls to it and wasn’t too hard to manage.
We pulled off the road right before the cottage so I could hop on top of the ATV while it was in the trailer. It was quite funny and we all had a good laugh when everyone in the cottage looked out the door to see me being towed into town. Pictures are always available within the Flickr site if you want to see the daily happenings.
I got to see Uncle Fred, Aunt Judy, Kelly, Aunt Lois, Keri, Heather, Heather’s two kids Breana and Kyleigh (sp?), Uncle Greg and Aunt Mariette and the always lovely Nanny. I managed to score the trailer in the neighbours yard to sleep in which was amazing as I had the privacy and the ability to sleep in late in the morning without being awoken by the happenings of inside the cottage. Every night I would bring the laptop outside and either read some old Spider-Man comic books or play some old Sierra games (Leisure Suit Larry 5 was working fine until I encountered some sound driver error. Doh! That always happens right in the middle of the game! I don’t even remember finishing this particular game so I believe this may have happened in the past half way through the game and I gave up, ESPECIALLY reading about how I will need to run through the game after it’s patched. Argh. I may as well just wait until Quest For Glory 2 is remade into VGA (which is coming up close!)
We had a few drinks until midnight as I wanted to stay up for my birthday. Uncle Fred and family were nice enough to get me a six pack of Stella for the week and Uncle Fred and I enjoyed it.
Weather Report: Downright dirty with the rain falling.
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Neat Things to do with your Gmail Account
I stumbled upon this blog entry about interesting things you can do with your email address over at Gmail.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.htmlLet’s say you have a Gmail account listed as mike.smithers@gmail.com
Technically, Gmail, doesn’t look at the period in the beginning portion of an email so you can send different permutations of this:
Mikesmithers
M.ike.s.m.ithers
Mikesmithers.Another cooler feature is the fact that you can append a bit of text to your email address such as:
Mike.smithers+bank@gmail.com
Which would still go to your own email account but you could use these tags for your own use. For example, in the above example, I could use this email address for any online banking related sites I go to so when I get an email in my inbox, I can always filter out any related to mike.smithers+bank@gmail.com and voila! All my bank related emails are there for my reading. I guess you can also sent emails directly to a folder if you wanted to. Either way, a neat trick.
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Foolscap
I came across the word ‘foolscap’ today and realized that all these years, I thought the long piece of paper was actually called ‘fullscap’.Wondering where the word ‘foolscap’ came from, I took at look at our favourite Wikipedia site and found the following:
Foolscap was named after the fool’s cap and bells watermark commonly used from the fifteenth century onwards on paper measuring 17 × 13½ inches (432 × 343 mm) or a subdivision of this into halves, quarters and so on. The earliest example of such paper that is firmly dated was made in Germany in 1479.Unsubstantiated anecdotes suggest that this watermark was introduced to England in 1580 by Sir John Spielmann, a German who established a papermill at Dartford, Kent. Apocryphally, the Rump Parliament substituted a fool’s cap for the royal arms as a watermark on the paper used for the journals of parliament.
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High Hopes
I find myself wanting to spend more and more time with Vero so when Philipp’s flight got canceled yesterday and subsequently left me with my car parked at Vero’s after work, I decided to stick around her place for dinner. Vero usually gets home around 4:30 so I only had a half-hour wait.
I did decide to take a nap but lo and behold, I woke up around 6PM with no Vero around! What the heck? She must have been working overtime again! I decided to leave and grab some St-Hubert on the way home but a few minutes into my dinner Vero calls and tells me she got out a little late and went to the grocery store. Ah well.
After dinner I decided to tackle the challenge of cleaning the garage. It has been looming over my head for many a month so I didn’t know how to approach it. I don’t know what your cleaning methods are like, but I like to start on one end, throw all the excess junk out of it and have it a giant heap at the other end of the area I’m working in. So by the time Mike came in to help, the front of the garage seemed decent enough and the back of the garage looked like a bomb went off.
We were done cleaning by the time Vero arrived and we went to Canadian Tire so I could buy a push broom. Lucky for me that push brooms were 50% off this week and I managed to snag one for $12! Case in point -> If you don’t need something RIGHT AWAY (I’ve gone many a year without a push broom) then it doesn’t make sense to buy one at regular price. Eventually it will go on sale.
Heading home, we watched a few episodes of Veronica Mars and then headed to bed. Tonight’s challenge – Clean the bedroom as the parents are coming up on Friday and will be staying there. Why are the parents up? Well, we are heading out on Saturday morning to go to Gaspe for the week for the Patterson family reunion. That should be fun times although I keep hearing of more and more cousins dropping off the trip. What used to be me seeing some cousins I haven’t seen in awhile has turned out to be me and the old folk. I jest, there will be a few young folk there and really, I have become one of the old folk as well.
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Happy Birthday Jenna and Rob!
Last night Vero and I headed over to Rob and Janice’s place to celebrate Jenna’s first birthday. A torrential downpour started as soon as we were going to head out so we waited a few minutes and decided to brave it. This reminded me of the Tulip Festival Joe, Mike, Vero and I went to a few years ago. SOAKED to the bone!
We did manage to get to the house virtually unscathed and the party was in full force with Mallory, Scotia and Ryley terrorizing the house and everyone munching on some burgers and sausage. There were balloons everywhere, party hats (watch out for those party hats, you never know if someone may kick you out for wearing one), and noisemakers. It was quite the event.
I settled in with a burger, salad and some corn. Speaking of corn, Jenna loved the stuff. She was mowing down her second piece of corn of the night. I think it may have to do with the fact that the cob may act as a good teething ring. Either way, it was all over the place and I had a good laugh watching her eat it.
They got her all dressed up to unwrap some gifts. As I thought, one year olds seem a little distracted to focus their energies into unwrapping a gift and tend to enjoy the wrapping paper just as much as the gift. She ended up with a ton of toy kitchen stuff…frying pans with fake bacon, eggs, etc. Then there was this Subway Sandwich set which had everything from the restaurant (other than my favourite cold cut trio!). It was quite hilarious to see that Jenna would not focus on the camera for anyone so I’m sure most of the pictures have her looking elsewhere in the room. I’m glad to see that the kitchen stuff we randomly picked out fit in with her theme of gifts.
After the gifts, the cake came out. They had one solely for Jenna to play in with was fun times. She sure enjoyed that icing and at one point Ryley’s uncle planted his face into the cake which was quite funny. Once Jenna had her fun with her own cake, the other cake came out which was for Rob as his birthday is the next day (as I write this, Today! Happy Birthday buddy.) As we were munching on the cake, Ryley and Scotia came over and whispered to me that Rob should get some cake in his face. I said ‘Fine’ but not realizing that they needed me to accomplish this task. A smile crept up on my face at the thought of being able to plant a nice birthday cake in his face on his birthday. A few minutes later Ryley comes back and says it’s time. I tell him I don’t think it’s the right time but he’s insistent and yells out “Dad, I think you should stay seated down for a minute.”. I had a good laugh and mentioned to Ryley that I had to teach him the finer points of sublety! It was quite hilarious after that point as Rob clearly knew what was coming for him and he had to sit there and take so I hammed it up and said “Ryley, I’m out of cake, is there any cake on the table I can go get? Oh yes, there is. Excellent. Wait, I’ll just take this cake past Rob to the counter so I can cut a piece. Oh wait, someone may want to get a camera ready for this event.” It was over the top as Rob eyed the cake coming his way. I did manage to surprise Ryley as I got him with the cake first and then went for the double hit with his Dad as well.
After the cake, Vero and I helped clean up, played with Jenna and then Rob, Ryley and I went down to play some Nintendo Wii. I ended up playing Fantastic Four which was a decent game and then we hammered through five songs on Rock Band to unlock a new tune. I ended up playing drums and singing at one point as Rob isn’t much for the singing part. It was quite challenging but the EASY level is quite forgiving on mistakes. I’m enjoying seeing Ryley like playing the game and hope that he will use that dedication to the game to one day be dedicated to playing the guitar. I have shown him the ultimate rock star moves including the playing the guitar vertically and the power slide. He has mastered them well.
It was a great night and Vero and I headed home to watch another episode of Veronica Mars.
Happy birthday to both Jenna and Rob!
Special birthday note goes out to Carleigh whose birthday was a few days ago as well!
