rhymes with milk

Little Red at the Randy Weeks Conservatory Theatre

We all had a great fancyday in Denver. It started with brunch at Linger, Little Man ice cream for dessert, a quick pitstop at the LoHi playgrounds, a matinee musical (Nora’s first!!), and a game of tag under some gigantic dancing aliens.

Here’s a thumbnail view of our day.

Really fun night. Went with Mom & Dad, and met Jenna & Jeff at the venue. I caught a rubber pint glass 3 inches from my nose during the chaotic intermission swag-toss – it should have made it onto SportsCenter’s Top 10 that night. The show itself was pretty good, but the second half started to drag as every segment started to look like the last.

After the show, Dustin took us all to see the backstage area and green room. That was the first time I’d seen that at Boulder Theater despite having worked events there myself, and it was rad. Who knew there’s an isolated courtyard behind the theater? Wild.

I also got to catch up with Peter, who just got back from selling bespoke ski boots in Austria. Never a dull moment in his life.

Mission Ballroom (with Dustin)

• Teri Gender Bender
• The Mars Volta

Mars Volta’s setlist:

1. Vicarious Atonement
2. Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)
3. Eriatarka
4. Graveyard Love
5. L’Via L’Viaquez
6. Empty Vessels Make the Loudest Sound
7. Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus
8. Blacklight Shine
9. Drunkship of Lanterns
10. The Widow
11. Cicatriz ESP
12. Televators
13. Son et lumière
14. Inertiatic ESP

Broomfield Event Center (1STBANK Center)

• Local Natives opened up the concert, but Ally and I were at a party at her mom’s house a little late and missed them. We weren’t too heartbroken.
• Arcade Fire

Ally’s former babysitter (Rebecca) from nearly 20 years ago posted on Facebook that she had two free suite tickets up for grabs to the concert. Ally tried to get them, but somebody beat her to it. Then she got a message from Rebecca saying that the person that got the tickets couldn’t find a babysitter, and couldn’t accept the tickets. So Ally was next in line. Apparently Rebecca and her husband run a branch of a mortgage company, and they own a suite (like, their company name is written above the door to the suite…that’s how hard they own it) at the Broomfield Event Center so that they can give their clients tickets as gifts. Whenever they don’t have anybody to give them to, they pass them on to friends (or Facebook friends). We got to sit in awesome leather chairs in a suite that smelled like nachos (we didn’t feel comfortable eating their fancy food since it was never offered to us, so we just drank ice water out of the sink in the suite’s minibar/kitchen…yeah).

The concert itself was amazing. Arcade Fire rocked, and played all of their best music. We moved around to behind the stage for then encore. This was the first concert I recorded with the iPhone4, and am impressed with the quality over the 3GS. It’s still shit, so I recommend searching YouTube for a better version.

Wells Fargo Theatre (at the Denver Convention Center)

• N.E.R.D.
• Gorillaz

Another amazing show, but different than I expected. Gorillaz actually had a band, and not just a virtual one. A huge band, actually. I think I counted close to 40 performers altogether, not including all the artists that tour with them just to sing the 1 or 2 songs they’re featured on. Incredible.

Here’s the encore. Such poor quality that I recommend you don’t watch, and in fact, don’t even listen. Neither are worth it.

The Pepsi Center

• Passion Pit
• Muse

Incredible show. Up there with NIN as being the most visually compelling concert I’ve ever seen. The music was epic.

Here’s the encore shown in two parts. It was shot from my iPhone, so the sound and video quality are shit. There are much better recordings out there, but you know, incessant record keeping.

August 20, 2010
DIA (8:00ish) -> Houston -> Miami

Went to Larry & Claudia’s home, ate crepes, and hung out outside until 1am when the temperature was still in the 80s.

Hung out in the hotel lobby all morning with the Krams and Uprights. So hot & humid outside that the shade wasn’t any cooler. Suited up and went to Owen’s Bar Mitzvah where Ally opened the curtain to the arc (wtf?). Cocktail hour had some bomb food including whipped potatoes and steak in martini glasses. Owen spent nearly a half hour talking during the lighting of the candles ceremony thing, and the reception was lead by some teal-eyed crazy hyper party-getting-goerer. Ally and I avoided the camera at all costs, but ended up singing Don’t Stop Believing into it.

Had brunch with the whole family at the Marriott. Ran into The Krams at the airport. Cindy had a gold railroad spike in her luggage that she had gotten from Grammy.

August 22, 2010
Miami (3:30ish) -> Dallas (slight delay, ate at T.G.I. Fridays) -> DIA

The Fox Theatre

• Delta Spirit
• The Rescues – in the 13th Street parking lot outside the theater. Only saw about half their set.
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• Guster

Awesome show. Alex Ebert is a crazy performer, and Guster’s set was one of their best. I think it’s refreshing when they have new music to play.

I apologize for the ass hole behind the camera singing along off-key. Way off-key.

So one of the biggest reasons I want a blog is to keep a record of things. My life, mostly. But lately I’ve either been to busy to post, or I’ve been using Twitter to record my daily doings. I’m not doing a very good job or recording much of anything here.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be to have a database-driven website where you can record just about anything, and view stats and numbers associated with those records. For example, as a personal project to better learn PHP and MySQL, I’m creating a site where Ally can keep track of the books she’s read. I’m making it expandable enough that eventually, multiple users will be able to use the same site, see what other books people have added, and associate those books with their own accounts. By “associate” I mean that they will be able to add it to their wishlist, or they can mark it as “already read” and put it in their archive of completed books. They’ll be able to pull up all sorts of numbers and stats, see graphs of books completed within a date ranges, let the site choose their next book for them based on any number or criteria, and so-on.

But I’m digressing a bit. The point is that it will be a simple website, and it’ll only take a minute to enter a new book you’ve read, yet you’ll be able to get all sorts of rich information out of it. I wish I could recreate this site for about a million different things, not just book reading.

Baby steps. I don’t have the know-how to create an infinitely customizable site where users can create their own set of record keeping data based on whatever’s important to them. Yet. Someday. For now, I just need somewhere to put things so I can easily “remember” them later (i.e. use a search bar to find them).

I have therefore decided to use this blog as a device for just that: record stats about my life. And to start, I’m going to create a post that simply records the bands I saw last night at the Guster concert. Utilizing tags, I’ll be able to later pull up posts for all the concerts I’ve been to (starting from today).

If I had started this about 8 years ago, I wouldn’t have to guess how many times I’ve seen Guster. “Was last night 10 or 11? 12 maybe? ” No more wondering.