Cancun Feb. '09

Christmas '08

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Las Vegas Trip - December 08

Boston / Styx Concert photos

Pics from Chicago Doobies concert

Chicago, Doobies and some dude

Tami and I went to the Doobie Brothers / Chicago concert on Sunday evening. And I have to tell you guys, it was a blast!

These were by far the best seats I've ever had at a concert. It was hot outside, but not overwhelming seeing as we were in the shade most of the time.

First, there was some dude from Italy that opened up for them. Tami and I looked at each other and thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. This dude was a bad, bad early round American Idol ripoff, you couldn't understand him and his "theatrics" were laughable.

Doobies, minus the great Michael McDonald (You don't know me but I'm your bruuuuutha), put on a fairly pedestrian show to start off. They did play my favorite song, South City Midnight Lady, and most of their hits but there was more to come later from the band. Like I said earlier, the seats we had were awesome and we could see the bass player Skylark's (his real name) sweat flying off him. Also they have two drummers for some reason. No dueling drums or anything and they played the exact same. I'm not sure what drummer #2 has over the band, but congrats to him for pulling off something unique.

Chicago was really good and the band I was looking forward to the most. Something about a horn section that gets me excited. The bouncers let us "rush the stage" so we were able to get very close. This may sound dumb, but it was cool because the trombone player would come over every once and a while and you could here the actual trombone, not just the mic version of it. Now for the weird part of the night:

For some reason, and Tami certainly has her ideas, the lead guitar player for Chicago kept staring at me. I noticed it early on, but didn't say anything until Tami was like "that guitar player keeps staring at you." All night, after a guitar solo, he would look my way for approval. After singing lead on a couple songs, the look or a smile. Most times I would give him the fist in the air appreciation. The times I was looking at something else, Tami would tell me he was still looking at me, and was well, disappointed. Pretty weird. A friend of Tami's knows one of the band members, and after a day of gossip, we discovered he was married, but that everyone was still unsure. Tami pointed out no ring. We'll leave it at that. I did unbutton my top button, but only because it was hot being that close to the stage.

After Chicago finished their set, both bands came out and played together. This was pretty cool. Three drummers, four guitar players, three keyboards, two bass players and four horn players and about nine singers. That's when they played their real hits. Very cool! The best concert I've seen in a long time. Both Tami and I were really rocking out. And yes the guitar player was still looking at me.

Where is Bill?

- Washing my hair
- Crying like a schoolgirl
- At the gym (yeah right)
- Developing new theory for quantum physics
- Punching an eighth-grader
- Sleeping
- Reorganizing CD collection
- Quilting
- Picking up dog poop
- Doing something better

theCarr Hall of Fame - Texas Rangers baseball

This year - 12-18 (.400) Worst in the AL. This is after a three game winning streak

Overall - 3,503-3,994 (.467)

Bad enough to always stink, but never good enough to do anything else.

Facts:

The Rangers (when combined with the Senators (1961-1971) are the oldest franchise that has yet to appear in a World Series; in fact, they have yet to win any playoff series (0-3).

They are the oldest franchise in the 4 major pro sports to never win a championship.

In their history, the team has only one playoff victory (1-9, .100); Nine straight playoff losses; they have never won a home playoff game. By comparison, the Yankees are 202-137 (.596) in the playoffs with 26 world championships, 44-21 in playoff series.

The Rangers have had 16 winning seasons in 36 years finishing in last place 14 times and next to last eight more times.

Ranger "great" Rafael Palmeiro played 2,831 games in his career never going to a World Series (MLB record).

Ranger great Bubby Bell played 2,405 games while never reaching the postseason.

0 Cy Young awards

2007 ERA leader: Kevin Millwood (5.16). He was the only starter to qualify because he was the only pitcher to pitch more than 162 innings that year (172 2/3 IP)

Baseball reference has a list of the most popular teams of all time (according to site views). The 2001 Rangers are 132 out of 200 on the list. That's it. That team was loaded with talent. IRod, ARod, Palmeiro, Michael Young, Ruben Sierra. But there pitching was Rick Helling, Doug Davis and Darren Oliver (Team ERA - 5.71). They finished last.

Boy do you guys suck.

Could be my all-time favorite commercial

Go ahead...You know the words

Some links

I Love Bacon
Mental Floss
Inappropriately Named Sports Teams (Maxim)

Summer Concert Series

In what Tim is now calling the Summer of Rock, I put together a nice little stretch of Van Halen on Thursday, followed by the Wedding Singer musical and Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers on Saturday.

I'm going to skip talking about the Wedding Singer because it was lame and not worth it. On to Jimmy Buffett!

What a gorgeous night for a concert. Temps were moderate and there was supposed to be heavy storms, but they held off and allowed us to enjoy a concert that has to be held outdoors.

I've never been to a Buffett concert, and let me be cliche' and say it was quite the concert. I knew about half of the songs (Tami knew more). The seats were fantastic! Very close to the stage. The thing that blew me away the most was the crowd. Parrotheads are a devoted and fun bunch. There must have been hundreds of beach balls being bounced around the stadium and there was also no shortage of beverages in the house.

The true experience was to be in the parking lot before the show tailgating. We arrived too late to get the full experience (who knew there were two stadiums in Frisco? Oh, everybody? well, I'm sorry that I didn't know there was a difference between Dr. Pepper and Pizza Hut Parks), but the couple behind us started at noon and knew people who had gotten there at 8am. The only fun part about leaving the concert was watching severely inebriated parrotheads stumbling to their cars.

I truly enjoyed myself tonight and over the whole weekend.

A Van Halen review that is too in-depth for the readers of this blog

Finally, after 25 years of listening to Van Halen, after seeing Van Hagar five times and after waiting through a six week cancellation, I finally got to see the original Van Halen. Well, except for no Michael Anthony.

Here are some pictures from the concert.

First rant - The bass parts on Van Halen songs are not difficult. I have a hard time defending Michael Anthony's bass playing ability when it comes up in conversation, but he made his mark with two things:


Wolfgang Van Halen is a talented bass player, but there was definitely something missing from the show, and that was the showman, Michael Anthony. Wolf was technically very sound, but stood there like a tree. Zero stage presence. I know he's only 17, and I get that, but if Mad Mike was there, the energy level at the show would have been much higher. You always need a guy to chug a bottle of Jack to make the concert better. The good news was there was no need for a bass solo.

I told Tim, I can't believe (Van Halen) replaced their mediocre, fat bass player with a mediocre fat bass player.

Second rant - Who spends $150 on tickets (each) and then brings an eight-year-old girl to a Van Halen concert? I had four girls sitting behind me, giggling every time DLR said a cuss word, screaming at a pitch that only Buckley could hear, and generally just killing the vibe at the concert. Some concerts are family friendly and some are not. This was one that was not. So thank you guy who brought your eight-year-old, the adults really appreciate it.

Now some good times

Wow, what a show! For a hardcore VH fan, it had everything I could ask for. I truly believe that this is as close I'm ever going to get to a religious experience. I was absolutely giddy at times and jumping and shouting like...well, an eight-year-old girl. But I knew all the words, and could appreciate the music. I did that devil horns thing with my hands, which to my knowledge, may have been the first time for a concert. It might be entertaining to see an iso-cam on me during the concert.

When you look at the set list, they played all of their hits (Jump, Running With the Devil, Pretty Woman, etc.), but they also went deeper with Somebody Get Me a Doctor, So This is Love?, Romeo's Delight and Little Guitars. The only clunker song was Little Dreamer, which isn't popular and pretty much sucks.

A surprisingly cut and flamboyant David Lee Roth was exactly what I expected. Several years ago, Eddie Van Halen mentioned that he didn't want DLR to tour because he couldn't hit high notes anymore. That's true, but you know what? That's OK because you couldn't really hear him to begin with. And he's ancient. But he still had enough to carry the show and be the guy that runs around the stage having fun. He surprised me with a mini-guitar solo leading into Ice Cream Man.

Alex Van Halen really brought it. His solo was incredible, and as always, didn't overplay.

Eddie Van Halen moved off of my death list, but not by much. Technically, he played a flawless show. He looked engaged and glad to play. He had a couple of exchanges with DLR where they challenged each other with singing/guitar riffs. That was pretty cool. His guitar solo was also really, really good but it seemed short. He didn't move much around the stage, but that really didn't bother me. His overall grade for me would be a B.

Overall, I'm so glad I went. I would have regretted not seeing David Lee Roth and the chance to catch Van Halen one more time (probably). The seats were good, but I could have sat closer. It wasn't sold out, but the place definitely was full. You'll be happy to know that this will be my last VH post for awhile.

Here's the set list they played:

01. You Really Got Me
02. I'm the One
03. Runnin' With the Devil
04. Romeo Delight
05. Somebody Get Me a Doctor
06. Beautiful Girls
07. Dance the Night Away
08. Atomic Punk
09. Everybody Wants Some
10. So This Is Love?
11. Mean Street
12. Pretty Woman
13. Drum Solo
14. Unchained
15. I'll Wait
16. And the Cradle Will Rock
17. Hot for Teacher
18. Little Dreamer
19. Little Guitars
20. Jamie's Cryin'
21. Ice Cream Man
22. Panama
23. Guitar Solo
24. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
25. 1984
26. Jump