When I did the music meme, I thought about tagging R, but then I thought, “He won’t actually do it.”
But Debbie did, and SHE threw down the gauntlet. And he actually did it!
I am shocked. And awed.
😉
Kudos to Debbie :)
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Category Archives: just for giggles
6 more weeks?
Since my hometown is a mere hour’s drive from Punxsutawney, I have to wish everyone a happy Groundhog Day! Although I’m not happy that the silly little bugger saw his shadow…anyone know what Phil’s accuracy rate is? 🙂
Master of disguise
Jealous of your cigarette
Like my roommie, I, too, fell in love this weekend. Or maybe it would be more correct to say “in lust.”
But not with a tree.
No, I fell in lust with Canadian musician Hawksley Workman.
R took me to see him at Club Infinity Friday night. He’s a big fan. I’ve just been recently introduced to his music. I think my favorite of his CDs is (last night we were) the delicious wolves, featuring my favorite of his songs, striptease.
After he finished performing it live, I turned around and looked at R and said, “Oh. My. God.”
He just smiled, as if to say “Yep, I told you.”
The man positively exudes sensuality. Sex permeates his being. I’m not even remotely exaggerating.
We made a few friends at the show. To our left was the superexcited blonde girl from Burlington. Before the show started, she bounded onto the floor and plunked herself into place. She and R made some small talk about Hawksley and favorite songs, and “what do you think he’s going to open with” etc. I mentioned that this was my first time seeing him.
“Ohmygod! You’re going to LOVE HIM! I can’t wait to see your face after the show!! I’ve seen him 17 times!! He totally knows me. I’ve had my picture taken with him!”
Okay, yes…Jen and I have been this person (sort of) on occasion. But imagine us in this state to the 27TH POWER. I told Jen that the girl kind of reminded me of Shan K, but on CRACK. Wow. 🙂
To our right were a couple of guys, one of whom apparently makes a living filming concerts. He was trying desperately to hook up with a girl standing in front of him who was clearly not interested. It was painful…
Oh, and standing in front of us was a group of high-school looking kids, one of whom I swear I taught last year. Ack!
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and have definitely become a fan. 😉
Saturday night, R and I (and his friend John) went to see Sideways, which I really enjoyed. My only problem is that it’s difficult for me to look at Thomas Hayden Church and not see Lowell from Wings. 😉 No, seriously…it was very good. I recommend it.
On Sunday, Jen and I put up our Christmas tree and decorated it, with the help of my little. Yay for Christmas trees and big bay windows. If only there was a fireplace…sigh…
I’m probably forgetting something, but that’ll do for now…
Your smile is fine, and it’s just like mine
Yes, yes, I’m back. It was a long weekend of way too much food (I think that all I ate on Friday was turkey sandwiches and pie. Mmmm…pie…) So this weekend was the Lowest of the Low concert at Club Infinity. They played two shows, Friday and Saturday. R went with a couple of friends on Friday night…I went with Jen on Saturday. I was kinda bummed that we didn’t get to go to the show together, because I hadn’t seen him since Wednesday. I headed out a little bit ahead of Jen, thinking that I’d meet up with our Canadian friends and get our prime spot near the stage. It was around 9 when I got there, and the second opening act was just finishing up. I wandered around, not seeing any sign of our Low-going friends.
I decided to take a position near the edge of the floor and wait for Jen…I glanced around, still looking for the blonde Canadian us-es (inaccurate, as one of them is no longer blonde, but oh well…). No sign of them, but who should I see…
…but R! Yay!
I walked over to him and hugged him. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t wait to see you,” he said.
Awww… 🙂
The show was lots of fun, of course. A good mix of new stuff and old stuff. They played for about two solid hours. The crowd was energetic, but not as obnoxious as it can be sometimes. There was this one girl, who I think was actually shorter than me, who danced her way in front of us. In fact, she was so close that Jen assumed she was R’s friend’s girlfriend. Nope. She kept getting a little too close to me, and I would inch over a little bit closer to Jen.
“I think I’ve seen her in a Great White video,” R’s friend said. Heh.
Well, at any rate, a good time was had by all.
My one disappointment was that I was denied the extended harmonica jam that had been happening at either the beginning or end of Letter from Bilbao. It’s way cool, and they haven’t done it in quite a while. *wistful sigh*
I need an acoustic revue fix now…
Too much to say
Ack. It’s been a busy week. I’m still behind on things I wanted to talk about LAST week. I’ll do a quick summary.
First off, I need some tips on how to deal with the attention spans of 7-year-olds. My cheerleading class at the Y is down to four girls…three 7-year-olds and a six-year-old. They’re really not bad. Cute, eager. LOTS of energy. After about 45 minutes last Friday night, I let them run around, do cartwheels, bounce on the bouncy aerobics balls, basically just burn off some energy for about ten minutes before I brought them back together to review what we’d learned and stretch. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out how to hold their attention any longer!
I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with them tonight. I thought about looking for a silly little game, a team-building type thing. Two of the little girls are best friends and completely inseparable. One of them is sort of shy, and I think needs to be brought out of her shell a bit. Any ideas?
Finished reading Neverwhere last weekend. I loved it. It was original, clever, very funny at times, very creepy at times, and I wasn’t bored for a moment. Good stuff.
Saturday night, R met a few more of my friends…we went to a little get-together at Rachel & Brian’s place. Tim and Dayna were there too. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we had to eat and run so we could make it to the John & Mary show at Nietzche’s. (John and Mary were with 10,000 Maniacs. Mary sang after Natalie Merchant went solo.) I enjoyed the show.
After spending most of Saturday lounging around, getting R hooked on Sports Night (yay!), and R getting me hooked on Six Feet Under, I went to see Jackdaw at Sportsmen’s Tavern. This was a good venue for them. It’s small, but they sounded great. The only real complaint I had was the size of the stage. There’s six guys in the band, so it was a little crowded. Poor George was stuffed into the back corner with his drums. This one ridiculously drunk guy kept coming up and “dancing” and almost running into people. At one point, I was kind of dancing, and he kept looking at me as if he was going to try and dance with me. I slowly inched away. David noticed this and laughed at me. Thanks, dude.
Tuesday, R and I went to see Carbon Leaf, also at Nietzche’s. Earlier in the day, I went to New World Record to see them play an acoustic set. It was at 3 p.m., so the “crowd” was pretty small. The guys were good natured about this and made jokes. “If you need to shop, don’t let us stop you.” 😉 But by the end of their set, the random people who were in the store had stopped to listen, and a small crowd of people (including at least one employee) had made their way over from the adjoining Spot Coffee. They played all my favorite tunes from Indian Summer (except Raise the Roof) AND my favorite song from Echo Echo.
Terry, one of the guitarists, kept noticing me singing along and smiling. At the end of the set, Barry, the lead singer, urged everyone to come over and say hi. He was talking to a couple of other die-hard fans when I left, but I smiled and said I would see them at the show that night. He remembered me at Nietzche’s, so that was pretty cool…
R very much enjoyed himself. He remarked that Terry looked about “35 percent too Nickelback” to be in the band. Hee. It’s true…he doesn’t have the same “look” as the rest of the guys. Bigger body type, long hair and a mustache. But he looks so darn happy when he’s playing that you kind of forget. And he has such a *nice* voice when he sings.
I was happy that R was impressed with my boy Carter…it sort of validates my fangirl-like worship. 😉
It was a great show. The overly loud, drunk, enthusiastic college girls from Rochester were there, and I didn’t have much patience for them.
“Crazy traaaaaaaaaaain. Play Crazy traaaaaaaaaaain! We came all the way from ROCHESTER! EEEEEEEEEEEEE! We love you BARRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
Do I have more to say? Probably…but I should actually, you know, work today. 😉
A couple thousand words
Me with Carter from Carbon Leaf at the Cleveland Irish Festival. (Ignore the trucker hat…)
Jordan and Carter.
Yay! 🙂
Weekend in Cleveland, Part 3
Headed out early from Jen’s on Sunday, figuring we’d be there in plenty of time to say hello to the guys before they took the stage at 3. Um, wrong. The drive was about 30 minutes. We had to wait a good 15 minutes to get into the parking lot, park, walk to the gate, stand in line for tickets, then stand in line to enter the gate….and we got to the stage just before the show started.
I have to say….while a Jackdaw show is always a good time, seeing them at 3 in the afternoon at an outdoor festival just isn’t quite the same as seeing them in their natural habitat (that would be a loud, crowded bar taking the stage at around 10:30 p.m.).
Everyone around us seemed to be having a good time. Jen and I stood near the front of the stage with the rest of the Buffalo contingent and danced. My only gripe is that I requested “Proofrock” and it was not played…
Mike made a special dedication to his “future ex-wife” (ha…funny guy). He covered for any potential damage from that statement by adding “I love ‘er with all my hearrrrrrrt.” (that’s a pirate growl in there, y’all.) Joe Davies was his usual happy-fiddlin’ self, George was looking hot as ever in his wife-beater (yes, I know that sentence should be an oxymoron…however…yow!), Tim was forgetting the words as usual (he sang one line of Pigtail Man at least five times), and our favorite skirt-wearing, accordion-playing dude was, of course, winning the hearts of all the women between the ages of 12 and 50. 😉
After the show, we wandered over to the merch table to pick up the new CD, Triple Crown. In typical dork fasion, I asked the boys to sign my CD. (Hey, they might be famous one day!) Jen told David that he needs to play “Proofrock” on my birthday (CD Release Party–August 14!), prompting him to sign the CD cover with “Happy 17th Birthday Erin.” Yeah, he’s a funny guy too…
Part 2.5 of “men being cute with little kids are sexy”–this way too cute little boy was dancing in front of the stage towards the end of the set. The guys brought him up on stage and let him dance in the center for the rest of the song. Awww…
It was while we were speaking to them at the table when we realized just how wasted they really were. Wow. They hid it well on stage.
We wandered over to get some greasy festival food, and chatted with Jen and Tim for a bit before they needed to head back home for their family dinner. We said our goodbyes, and then headed for a seat on a nearby bench. We watched the guys schmooze with the fans for a bit.
Part 3 of “men being cute with little kids are sexy”–David was chatting with some people who had several young children with them. He was goofing around with them, swinging them around by the arms, and jusg generally being adorable. He chased them over near where we were sitting, started to swing one of them around….and fell. So yeah, even a guy in a skirt landing on his ass in the middle of a gravel parking lot is sexy when playing with little kids. 😉
Carbon Leaf did another amazing set. I think I’ve determined that “Torn to Tattered” is my favorite, followed very closely by “Desperation Song.” We stuck around to say hello and have my CD signed by the band. (Yeah, again, I’m a dork…) They are such an amazingly nice group of guys. I even got my picture taken with Carter! 😉 (he’s apparently married. ah, well. shouldn’t married guys have to wear rings??) I asked Barry when they’re coming to Buffalo again, and he said there’s a Rochester show in the works for September/October and they’re trying to get a show in Buffalo on the same trip. If not? I’ll happily drive to Rochester to see them. I really would love to see these guys more.
The drive home was…long. Realizing that we hadn’t eaten much of anything all day (waffles for me and a bagel for Jen, and french fries at the festival) we stopped at a McD’s near Erie, where Jen had to tell the dumb little boy at the counter that I wanted to order. And then I had to ask about McNuggets, because they weren’t on the dollar menu. Pretty much par-for-the-course at McD’s, I find.
And then….sleep. But not nearly enough. 🙂
Weekend in Cleveland, Part 2
Saturday, did lots of lying around. Went to Jen and Tim’s place to hang out, because Stephanie had a family reunion to get to. Susan wanted to take us to Ashland to see the house she’s going to be renting! The drive took a little bit longer than we anticipated, but Susan’s house (and yard!) is adorable.
We arrived at the Cleveland Irish festival with only about a half hour left of Jackdaw’s set. We got to hear a couple of my favorites, though…their cover of the Saw Doctors’ “Hay Wrap” and the very unique Jackdaw version of “Rattlin’ Bog.” This usually includes a couple of brief covers (such as Low Rider, You Shook Me All Night Long, and even Push It, by Salt and Pepa…) and an introduction of the band members. The intro always ends with “and together we are….(insert silly band name here). I so desperately want David to say “Wyld Stallyns” one of these days. 😉
We stopped by the merch table to say hi, and then wandered around the festival a bit. We saw some cute little Irish dancers (I SO want to learn how to step dance. Do they teach adult step dancing classes?) and Jen declared that she wants to populate the earth with little Irish girls who shall dance.
After the wandering, we returned to the Celtic Thunder stage for Carbon Leaf.
Oh….I am loving Carbon Leaf SO much this weekend. They were on last Saturday night, so they played an extra-long set, complete with three encores. We stood next to a tall gentleman who is apparently Carbon Leaf’s biggest fans. He sings along with such gusto, complete with imitations of lead singer Barry’s hand gestures. Also, directly in front of the stage, there was a woman wearing a Carbon Leaf t-shirt, holding a sign that read “Carbon Leaf Fan,” and….the piece de resistance…she was wearing a button that was a tiny version of one of those LED message boards that read “Carbon Leaf.” I am not making this up.
I may be a big fan, but….wow. That’s just scary. 🙂
Now, here’s part one of my “men being cute with little kids are hot” experience of the weekend. Directly in front of me, there was the cutest little blonde girl. My favorite member of Carbon Leaf, Carter (guitar and mandolin), kept looking down at the little girl and smiling, and winking, and it was just….sigh. So freakin’ adorable. I couldn’t stand it.
Carter, by the way, is a walking case for anti-botox. (ETA: botox statement courtesy of All Things Jen(nifer). My apologies) His entire face crinkles when he smiles, and it’s incredibly sexy.
Here’s Carter:
(many thanks to Blue Ridge Laughing for the photo)
These guys are incredible. Wonderfully talented, and they just look like they’re having so much fun every time they play. It’s amazing. Guitarist Terry is the happiest guy on earth. Jordan rocks the bass (not to mention Jen’s world…ahem…). And Carter…well, you all know how I feel about him. 😉 Plus, I just love the mandolin.
Stay tuned for part three: drunken Jackdaw boys, part 2 of “men being cute with little kids are hot,” more Carbon Leaf, and a long-ass drive home.
Weekend in Cleveland, Part 1
I had so much fun this weekend, I don’t even know where to begin…I think I’ll do this in installments. Let’s start with Friday.
Jen and I headed to Cleveland Friday afternoon, set for dinner at Cheesecake Factory followed by a night of fun at Howl at the Moon! We met Jen, Tim, and the other Jen and went off for dinner.
I think we had the most fun you could possibly have at dinner. Conversation somehow turned towards a rousing game of “Who’d ya f***” plus a list of people you would never, ever even think about, under any circumstances. (Examples: Newman from Seinfeld, Carrot Top, John Malkovich…)
I am somewhat afraid of what our waitress thought. 😉
Dinner was outstanding, and the Dulce de Leche cheescake was heaven on a plate.
Following dinner, Jen and I met Susan, Tracy and Stephanie at the piano bar, where we finally got to see Stephanie’s #1 piano-playing crush, Billy. Was not hard to see why…cute, funny, great voice. They did a version of “Picture” in which Billy sang the Sheryl Crow part. That was hilarious. The night was filled with the requisite number of bachelorettes and slutty chicks dancing on stage. One of the bachelorettes, Courtney, was wearing a red halter top that I was sure she was going to bounce right out of and a white fisherman’s hat that said “Bride” on it. (she looked shockingly similar to the blonde hoochie from our first trip to the piano bar, except the original whore was much thinner, and thereby more Britney-esque). Courtney was on stage no less than five times. Stephanie dropped a $20 to come up on stage and sing her favorite song, which she did quite well until Billy looked at her and she forgot the words. 😉
We went back to Stephanie’s, piled into her king-size bed, and stayed up much too late chatting. By the way? Stephanie’s bedroom is roughly the size of Connecticut.
Coming up, Jen, Erin and Susan take on Ashland, Ohio and then storm the Celtic Thunder stage. Stay tuned!