Music

Oh My God, It’s the Children of the Corn!

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OK, so here is my public admission: I went to see Hanson at Avalon in Boston Friday night.  That’s right, I went to see Hanson of "Mmmmmbop" fame.  Scary, eh?

Now, there is a good reason for doing this – my best friend John wanted to go see them and needed someone to go with him.  He likes their music, and being a good gay man, really likes the boys in the band.  I was a little concerned that I was going to be the only straight male in the whole place, or that it would be filled with teeny-boppers or something.  Well, I was in for quite the surprise.

Turns out the main audience for a Hanson concert would be women between the ages of 18-30.   There were probably 600 people at the show Friday night, and I swear that at least 550 of them – possibly as many as 575 – were all women in that age range.  So oddly enough, while I went there expecting John to be the only one enjoying the "eye candy" and me being in a living hell, John really really only had the boys on stage, and was surrounded by a throng of screaming girls pressing up against each other – pretty much his hell/my heaven.

However, when you get that many women in one place, two things start to happen: first of all, as a guy, you actually start to feel uncomfortable.  You’re way outnumbered, and any "sexual energy" that might normally be there is destroyed by the sheer amount of estrogen there.  Secondly, you simply feel like you are someplace you’re not supposed to be – a bachelorette party, the girl’s locker room, or one of those all-women sex toy parties.

Something else that happens when you get that many women together at a concert is that they scream.  A LOT.  LOUDLY. Ear-piercingly, ear-bleeding loudly.  And then you have the drunk girls, one of which was behind me…. yelling "I LOVE YOU" into my fucking ear all night, and spilling her drink on me.  I thought that the first fight I would ever start at a concert was going to be at a goddamn Hanson concert.

So what about the music?  I have to admit, they were good.  They are a lot more raw, rocking, and funky in their live performances than they are on record.  Even their first-album material gets a make-over with a heavy dose of gritty rock n’ roll.  Their voices will always harmonize, so it takes the edge off of the songs making for the girl-friendly rock, but when they lose the harmonizing, their individual voices are a lot better and more interesting than I would have thought. 

They did great cover versions of "Long Train Running" by the Doobie Brothers and "Feelin’ Alright" (the Dave Mason song best known by the Joe Cocker version) that really showed off their chops.  The guitarist out of the three Hanson Brothers (sorry, still don’t know their names) really stepped up to the plate on the latter, belting out the song with a voice far more gravelly, grittier and more interesting than I would have ever thought.  However, he still needs to lose the "white boy overbite and head-bob" that he does while playing his guitar.  You know the one I’m talking about…

Music

Sweet Emotions

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So after all the commotion on the AeroForce One discussion forum about the opening night set list, I wondered what would be MY "ideal" set list for an Aerosmith concert.  I tried to be realisitic about it – they are gonig to play "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing", so I left that in there.  Otherwise, this is what I would love to hear, and in this order:

01. Walk This Way
02. Same Old Song and Dance
03. Rag Doll
04. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
05. Rats In the Cellar
06. Lord of the Thighs
07. Seasons Of Wither
08. Shakin’ My Cage
09. Sweet Emotion
10. Janie’s Got A Gun
11. Draw The Line
12. Love In An Elevator
13. Dude (Looks Like a Lady)
14. Kings and Queens
15. Dream On
16. Last Child
17. No Nore No More

Encore:

18. Back In the Saddle
19. Train Kept A Rollin

If I was able to switch in something else for I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, I’d go with another ballad – either "What it Takes" off of Pump or "Home Tonight" off of Rocks.   Or they could swap in "Rattlesnake Shake" or any song off of Honkin’ on Bobo.

Music

Laughs Maniacally

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Well, I did it.  I saw Aerosmith and had fan Club (AeroForce One) tickets for the first time.  It was my ninth time seeing the band, but the first time getting the fan club tickets.  It was worth the wait 🙂  We got there and they told us that our seats had basically gotten eliminated during the stage construction, so they moved us up to the area between the catwalks, 16 rows from the stage.  Andrea looked at me and asked if I was going to be alright.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive the night once I saw where we were sitting.

A picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes, so here is a photo of how close to Steven Tyler I got:

Photo_103005_012

and a picture of me in front of Steven:

Photo_103005_013

This was the set list for the night:

01. Walk This Way

02. Same Old Song and Dance

03. Cryin’

04. Livin’ On The Edge

05. Angel

06. Dude (Looks Like a Lady)

07. Jaded

08. Shakin’ My Cage

09. Sweet Emotion

10. The Other Side

11. Janie’s Got A Gun

12. Rag Doll

13. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing

14. Walkin’ The Dog

15. Dream On

16. No Nore No More

17. Love In An Elevator

Encore:

18. Seasons Of Wither

19. Helter Skelter

Not a bad set list at all.  I LOVE Seasons of Wither, so that was cool to hear that live again.  However, the highilght by far was "No More No More" a long-time classic favorite of mine that I had never heard live.   Some people on the AeroForce One discussion boards complained about the set list and how there was too much "MTV era pop" on there.  Well, those songs are the songs from youth, so it’s fine by me.  Though I would still love to hear "Kings and Queens" live and I read on the boards that they did "Nobody’s Fault" on the Kiss/Aerosmith co-headlining tour.

It is kind of funny how much hatred hard-core Aerosmith fans have for the song "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing," the band’s only #1 hit… its a ballad not written by a band featured in sappy moment in a mediocre movie, so the old-timers and purists pretty well despise it and view it as their "beer run song."  I mean, I don’t care for it for all those same reasons – Aerosmith’s #1 single should be "Sweet Emotion" or "Walk This Way" not that ballad.  But that’s the way it is, and I’m just glad that the band can stay so vital that 30 years later they can release a song that hits #1 for the first time and then come out with a blues album (Honkin’ on Bobo) that is acclaimed by critics and fans alike.

In any case, hopefully I didn’t embarass my date for the show too much (Andrea’s damn lucky girl, eh?  She gets to hang out with me AND gets 16th row seats to her first Aerosmith show) – I was pretty much a complete wildman the entire concert – I warned her before that I may start to act like a 12 year old girl at a N’sync concert.  I don’t think she believed me until she actually saw it happen.  However, it looks like she is having a good time:
Photo_103005_014

Food and Drink

This is must be why they are for women

So I was looking for a good snack or meal replacement type bar to have in the morning when I’m running late or have to catch an early flight, or what have you, and while looking through the approximate 4,594,389 available varieties of bars available at your average store, I came across Pria from Power Bar. I liked the nutritionals on it, and bought one to try out.

Now, I admit that I didn’t know until just now that it is designed for women. The design isn’t exactly feminine and there’s nothing on the packaging that screams "for woman only." Yeah, there’s a picture of a female on it, but so do other products. Hell, if I had my choice of lathering up with a soap that has a picture of a woman on it vs. a picture of a man, I’d much rather go with the woman!

Anyway – I had this Pria bar today. I don’t know what the word "Pria" actually means, or where they came up with the word, but I’m quite certain that it MUST mean "intestinal demon" in SOME language. If I had eaten an entire ear of corn – husk, silk, cob and all – it wouldn’t have left me feeling as bloated and disgusting. What the hell are these people thinking? This isn’t food – its a concrete roadblock for your lower intestine. I can eat high fiber cereal with no problem, but this thing… God help me, make it STOP!

Marketing

How to screw up a client relationship

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Yeah, so here’s a word of advice to all marketing services agencies out there.  Listen and read and follow any requests and/or directions that your client gives you.  Really. 

I had a situation yesterday where a very simple request to an agency – who shall remain nameless out of professional courtesy – was mucked up because they simply didn’t pay attention to the fact that I requested a logo in JPG format rather than the TIF format that they sent it to me in.  A small mistake, granted, but one that started a chain reaction of events that ate up a lot of my afternoon and caused a great deal of frustration on my part.

However, Kudos to Winner Advertising and Marketing By Design for doing a great job for me and going above and and beyond the call of duty.

Weblogs

Hellooo out there

Holy Weblogs Batman!  I haven’t updated this in a LOOOOONG time.  If anyone has actually come here looking for something new and interesting, my bad.  been a wee bit busy!  In fact, looking back, it would appear that I stopped writing in here almost exactly one week after starting my new job back on August 1st.

Admittedly, there was another post that I started back during the first week of September, but I was sitting in a hotel room in Tampa writing it, and then something happened with the web browser and I lost the post.  Twice.  TypePad really needs to create some sort of auto-save or "drafts" folder system.

So let me start off with telling you about another blog that I recently came across that made me laugh out loud.  The Comics Curmudgeon is the perfect companion for those, like me, who find the comics often lacking and sometimes downright puzzling.  I’m as much of a fan of classic comics and animation as anyone, but man, there are some comics that need to go.  Marmaduke, Dennis the Menace, Heathcliff, and the god-awful Family Circus need to be retired.  ENOUGH ALREADY!  They all live in the 50’s unless they need to make a "joke" (I use the term loosely) about cell phones or the Internet.  Then suddenly there’s someone in a hoop skirt ordering their daily milk delivery over the Web or some shit like that.   

Whatever.

Current Affairs

Who the Hell CARES!??!

I’m trying to think of something I could care less about than whether or not Paula Abdul had an affair during the filming of American Idol, and if she did, with whom did she commit the illicit act… but I’m having a really hard time coming up with something less important.

I think perhaps if there was a front page article about a cockroach getting stepped on in Sri Lanka I might be less concerned with that, but I think I might find it more compelling.

Web/Tech

Good Knight! What won’t they think of next?

Thanks to some SPAM from Friendster,
a site I haven’t been to in over a year, I was reminded that it was my
friend Paul’s birthday this week.  So we chatted online tonight and
caught up on everything that has been going on.  He does some pretty
cool web programming and development work and he sent me this link: http://huzzahonline.com/knights/ Which is a game that he developed.  Well, it is more of a spectator sport… kind of a fantasy league but not based in any reality.  Yes, I know it is very geeky (but he is a web programmer, so what do you expect) but also very clever and well done, typical of Paul.  He’ll bury us all, that Paul!