While Cool Jesus was out partying the night away with The Police, MP and I were busy cleaning up our apartment. It’s done… finally. We’ve had a number of delays and weekend activities that have prevented us from putting the finishing touches on our new abode, but we were finally able to do it this weekend.
With the help of a little Tenchu Z we’re done and I present the photos, courtesy of Flickr.
While sitting at Fenway Park last night, I had a grand vision that I’d log on once I got home and pound out a post-midnight blog about my night at the Police concert. I was dreaming of bringing that “hot off the press” auro to The Diatribe. Sadly, that didn’t happen. Oh well, what’s a 12-hour difference, right? Say what you will about aging rock stars reuniting strictly for money. Say what you will about how said rock stars are just going through the motions. Say what you will about seeing rock stars in concert “when it matters” and not some decades later. I can hear those arguments ad nauseum. I will listen patiently and then when you’re done, I’ll give you a giant raspberry. The Police were phenomenal. I waited over 20 years for this tour and these three guys delivered. And then some.
Stewart, Andy, and Sting played for well over 2 hours and had the crowd of 35,000 whipped into a frenzy. Several times during the show, I looked around in awe at the crowd. It was a level of excitement so different from that of a Red Sox game at Fenway. The lights were turned off, which was a huge asset to setting the right ambiance. The only lights came from the stage in center field, and a few hundred arm-high cigarette lighters.
Nothing could get me down last night. Not the pre-show downpours, which luckily subsided before the concert. Not the dew point of 70 and the air so thick with humidity that you couldn’t cut it with a chainsaw. Although, one thing that did come close to driving me to distraction was the constantly dripping pipe directly over my head. Condensation from this pipe, some 25 feet above me, kept me moist and and annoyed all night. You just gotta love a 95-year-old ball park. However, this was offset by the presence of a “celebrity” two rows ahead of me.
Early in the show, the sweet smell of weed wafted through the air. I was just waiting for a major bust, since there were seemingly hundreds of Boston cops at the park. But the smell subsided and any arrests were put on hold. But later on, I discovered the smoker. It was a man two rows in front of me who was the spitting image of Comic Book Guy from ‘The Simpsons.’ Tipping the scale at 300 pounds – check. Tent-sized t-shirt – check. Dark shorts – check. Scraggly goatee - check. Graying ponytail – check. Glasses – check. If only I could have heard his voice, like if he had declared, “Worst Police concert ever.” To sum up, the guy smoked up a few times, got away with it, and his wife didn’t seem too pleased about his antics.
Anyway, I’m still jazzed about the show. Looking forward to being back there tonight. It may be corny, but a thought that ran through my head last night was that now I can die happy.
Can someone please explain to me the purpose of Twitter? I see a ton of coverage on the novelty of this new system, and I’ve heard about several implementations of twitter-specific technology tied to iPhone applications.
It seems like a micro blog geared towards adolescent teenagers with too much time on their hands, and too many text messages to send.
“Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app.”
- TIME Magazine“It’s one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.”
- New York Times“Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.”
- Newsweek
Can someone please explain to me the value of twitter?
Aloha. I’m back. I don’t really have any Diatribe-worthy pieces at the moment, but I wanted to touch base. I actually just scrapped the beginning of an extremely boring tale about my trevails in trying to smoke a pipe. No one wants to hear that, I’m sure. I just spent the first half of the day cleaning and disinfecting my apartment and now I feel sick. Cracking a window to diffuse the fumes didn’t help. See, isn’t this all fascinating stuff?
Oh, I’m not sure if I had mentioned this at the time or not, but one of the events that sent me into my Diatribe hiatus tailspin was when someone crashed into my car (while I was home in bed) and took off without leaving a note. I had to deal with insurance adjustors, appraisers, and other assorted dicks. I had been under a raincloud since then, but now the rest of this summer will be the Summer of Cool Jesus.
Miss Possible and I have become fascinated with HBO’s latest comedy “Flight of the Conchords.” If you haven’t seen it and have HBO, you’re missing out. While it cannot compare with the Funniest Television Show of All Time, but it’s the best comedy on Television since AD.
The dry humor and wit is fantastic, intertwined with songs written by the comedians for the show.
Brief Synopsis from HBO.com:
Flight of the Conchords follows the trials and tribulations of a two man, digi-folk band from New Zealand as they try to make a name for themselves in their adopted home of New York City. The band is made up of Bret McKenzie on guitar and vocals, and Jemaine Clement on guitar and vocals.
Bret and Jemaine have moved to New York in the hope of forging a successful music career. So far they’ve managed to find a manager (whose “other” job is at the New Zealand Consulate), one fan (a married obsessive) and one friend (who owns the local pawn shop) — but not much else.
For a taste, here’s a sample of a song from this week’s episode entiteld “If You’re Into It” (Parental Guidance is suggested):
I just realized that I missed the entire month of June here on The Diatribe, along with a portion of May and almost half of July. Sorry about that. I’m back now and just wanted to check in and say ‘hey.’ I’ve missed out on so many Diatribe-worthy topics, but the break was much needed. The only problem, besides, being rusty, is having the feeling that I’m a visitor, an outsider, now. For those of you out there who don’t know me, I used to be a regular participant around these parts. Hope to get back to that old regularity.
I know I’ll catch all sorts of (completely worthy) shit for this, but my Diatribe downfall can directly be traced to the shearing of my hair. I guess Samson was right and Delilah knew what she was doing. The last time I was in this predicament (some 7.5 years ago), I said never again. Someone once said to never say never again. And I won’t. But I’m sure thinking it.
If you happened to catch this week’s episode of NPR’s On The Media, you’ll find this all very familiar.
In their leading piece this week, they investigated companies that have focused their advertising efforts on demonstrating their corporate responsibility to the environment. The British Oil Company, British Petroleum also known as BP, is an example of one such company. For the past five years or so, BP has been running regular television advertisements in an effort to re-brand themselves as “BP, Beyond Petroleum.”
While I’m very familiar with the concept of Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware), I always felt as though there needed to be truth in advertising. Otherwise it would be deemed false-advertising, right?
According to the piece, and I found this to be particularly insightful, there are currently no laws on the books that prohibit companies from making partially-false claims about environmental efforts. False advertising is more geared towards competitive statements implying that your product is better than your advertisers, or statements of fact about what your product can or cannot do — not what the company itself is doing behind closed doors.
According to the trusted source of Wikipedia, BP alone was responsible for 104 oil spills between January 1997 and March 1998. Additionally, due to corrosive piplines in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in August 2006 the company spilled over 1 million litres (~264,000 Gallons) of oil on Alaska’s North Slope.
In July of 2006, BP admitted, after the news was leaked to journalists, that it was facing criminal charges for allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to seep across the Alaskan tundra, one of the world’s most sensitive habitats. Environmental advocates pointed to the relative lack of press coverage about the spill as evidence that BP had successfully “greenwashed” its image while continuing environmentally unsound practices.
Now, if this doesn’t get your goat, I don’t know what will. Call me a sucker, Prior to this report, I had always believed that BP was trying to do the right thing. Now, I’m not so sure. The next time I see a BP, Beyond Petroleum, Advertisement. I’ll likely have to throw something.
It has been a chaotic couple of days. It all began on Friday night with a forray of boxes and cleaning supplies strewn around the apartment and continued throughout the entire weekend. The movers were extremely prompt, and I’d highly encourage anyone living in the South Bay Area to use Go Pro Movers as they quoted us with 3 hours to pack and 3 hours to unpack. They arrived at 8:20 and by 10:15 we were off to our new Apartment.
The biggest complication of the weekend was the layout of the living room (floor plan 3). Trying to figure out how to arrange everything in an orderly fashion, with the dining room table was no easy task. It didn’t have the clearly defined dining room area that Alderwood had. We managed and were able to set most of the major items up by Saturday evening.
We finished off the kitchen, living room and bedroom yesterday — leaving the guest bedroom / office for another day — and decided to head over to Alderwood to put the finishing touches on the apt. As soon as we walked in, we realized how much nicer our new place is. I even said to MP Saturday night as we strolled around our new complex with Bogart, that I felt like we were living in a resort. It’s really gorgeous, and we really would not have been here if it wasn’t for MP’s work ethic, dedication and mad computer programming skillz.
I’ll have pictures once we get everything set up.. we’re still in Moving Box Hell.
One year from Today, and Miss Possible and I will be getting married. It’s a very strange notion to think that exactly one year from now.. we will be married. We even struggled to comprehend this fact last night, while watching the Santa Clara fireworks display. At first we slipped, wondering where the Los Gatos fireworks display would be held — and how it would compare to that of Santa Clara’s. We then realized that it’d be at least 2 years before we were able to answer that question — as next year we’ll be in Massachusetts.
A very strange notion indeed.