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Blog - July 2003 |
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This page stores my blog entries from July 2003. The entries are dated July 5, July 8, July 16, and July 24.
Preface / Pam and Pam-ability / Money, It's A Gas / Warped Tour Preparations Saturday, July 5, 2003 Dear god! While adjusting my blog for the new month, I realized that I wrote only four entries for June. Even so, it tied for second for the largest file size of any month I've written (tied with March 2003 and behind February 2003). I hadn't been quite as motivated (or had as much time) to write as regularly as I had been. Maybe I'll see more things to write about as time goes on. ***** And what would a blog entry from me be without something Pam? We've been fairly busy together this past week. On Thursday night, we bounded off to William Land Park to go see a production of Othello. This was a part of the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, which is produced by the City Theater at Sacramento City College. Pam and I grabbed some hamburgers, french fries, and drinks at Cookie's Drive-In on our way over and ate in the park. The play was great! Admittedly, both Pam and I had problems paying attention (me in the beginning; her near the end) to the 2.5-hour production, but the actors did a great job. Pam felt that the actors delivered their lines in a rushed manner, and I certainly noticed that from the beginning, too. The minimalist set never distracted from the storyline, and their use of perspective (Iago and Roderigo talking to Brabantio, who is on a balcony in the play) worked very well. Even when the lights temporarily went out, the actors did not flinch; Iago (played by Stephen Quinn) told the audience, "God works in mysterious ways" when the lights came back on. Our only disappointment was the lack of credits to the ducks and geese of William Land Park. I don't know how they set up the microphones, but we could hear the fowl rather clearly through the speakers. Last night, I invited Pam over for ice cream and fireworks at my house. Her family had nothing planned, and I certainly wasn't going to allow that to ruin her 4th of July. I bought over $60 worth of fireworks this year (with aid of a $10 off coupon) and had a wonderful time. My highlights reel would include:
The others that we set off were great, too. I may not bother with the Friendship fireworks, since those little ones just don't seem to be all that interesting. I think I'll avoid the Space Capsule next year, since it made a lot more in a way of whistles than I cared for in a firework. Pam and I chatted quite a bit after our firework show. It was nice to have a good conversation with her at that point. I mean, we have had nice conversations in the past, but I think this was one of our longer ones. I don't think it really stopped, despite a bathroom run before hopping out the front door and talking out front. I'm always happy with long, good conversations. Pam and I have been a couple who haven't really needed to always be talking about something, and that's certainly nice, too. ***** I'm close to one of those moods where you'd swear that money was burning a hole in my pocket. I'm not really there, but I have a lot of things I'd like to get in the near-ish future. I do not have a decent camera, and I'm doing some research for a digital camera. If I had to buy right now, I'd probably go with a Canon, though I'm not sure which one. Given what Jordan, a high school friend, has done with his Digital Elph S100, I've been tempted to get the S400 that's available now. The 4.1 Megapixel feature may be a bit more than I need, but if that'll help equate to better picture quality, I may spend the $500 to get it. Being the music lover I am, I have no more storage room for my CDs. My old Pepsi crate frame is completely filled up with more recent CDs propped up in front of it. Eventually, that'll have to go to make room for the cases I want to make for my samurai helmets (which will be another expense). I may hop over to Pier-1 Imports and look to see what they have in stock in the way of CD storage shelves or something like that. The aforementioned cases for my samurai helmets are one expense but not the only one for my helmets. One of my helmets lacks a decorative pillow, and I checked nearly every place I can find for an appropriate one. To no avail, I may have to either find one in China Town in San Francisco or make my own. Recently, I got fed up with my old RCA shelf stereo system that I've had since high school (1993 or 1994, I think). That piece of crap's cassette players never worked correctly, and now it fails to play some of my CDs. I had once thought about getting a new system, but then thought I should start piecing together a home theater system to eventually accompany a nice TV. Now I feel I should just get a shelf system and wait until I can afford to buy the theater system all at once. Upgrading my computer became a thought when I had to replace my power supply. It's not something I'm seriously considering right now, especially since I'd love to see how well the Opteron processor does performance-wise. Those items listed above don't include any CDs, DVDs, or stuff from concerts that I may buy in the future, either. Naturally, I'm going to have to prioritize and space these things out. ***** The Warped Tour makes its way to the Sleep Train Amphitheater a week from tomorrow. I'm getting rather excited about it, since I haven't been to a major concert since the Def Leppard concert last December and any concert since January or so. I look forward to seeing the Dropkick Murphys (for the third time), Rancid (for the second time), Less Than Jake, Suicide Machines, and many others. I'm getting rather irritated with trying to plan this out. I have never been to a festival-like concert tour before, and even with help from the Operation Ivy Message Board, I'm not so certain what I can carry in with me. I want to bring some water, bug spray, pen/paper, and a blanket. So far, it seems that they'll allow backpacks into the venue, and the Sleep Train Amphitheater would allow sealed bottles of water in. I'm just worried that the people putting on the Warped Tour might not allow the water in (especially since they're charging possibly $2/cup of water). I'm sure it'll all work out fine. I just hope I have a minimum of hassle while there.
Ice Cream Man / Sunday Fun / Better Humor Through German / Pictures / Gabe is Evil Tuesday, July 8, 2003 While washing my car Sunday afternoon, I heard music wafting over the houses and trees of East Sac. The familiar music approached slowly and eventually revealed what I thought it came from: an ice cream truck. I felt slightly sad seeing it cross my street and head off in a different direction. I hadn't seen or heard an ice cream truck in years, and I thought such a cool remnant of past summers had disappeared completely. I remember getting something from an ice cream truck when I was at my grandparents' house as a little kid. I value those rather vague memories merely for the fact that I was fortunate enough to partake in something that had been around for decades before me. But who am I kidding? I enjoyed it for the ice cream, too, and, Sunday, regretted not having my wallet with me. ***** As I watch my sleeping kitty snuggled on the foot of my bed, I realized just how much I accomplished this past Sunday. I bought more hot chocolate at Cost Plus, including some Mexican spiced hot chocolate (something new sounded interesting). Then, I headed over to Pier-1 Imports and bought a nice CD shelf for $60. That frees up room to put my eventually-built samurai helmet cases on my dresser. I'll need to get another shelf unit, though, since the current one is nearly full. I got a haircut, too, though it ended up being more of a careful shaping and shortening than the hack-job I had in mind. Once I got home, I let a $25 of 2000 Heather Ranch merlot (a bottle that I bought at Beverages & More some time ago) breathe while I washed my car. The merlot tasted great! To wrap up the day, I sat down and watched "Monsoon Wedding" that I borrowed from my friend, Emira. She is from Bangladesh and thought I'd enjoy that movie. It was a fun and interesting movie filled with some interesting twists. I don't know a whole lot about Indian culture, but I seemed to have some sort of understanding of the magnitude of certain situations that unfolded during the movie. This DVD also had "Bollywood Hollywood", but my computer wouldn't allow me to watch the whole thing. My computer, for some reason, fought against me with that DVD, yet others would play perfectly fine. Go figure! For one day, it probably doesn't seem like much. Given that I did my laundry and chores for the week, it was a lot more than I'd normally do in a weekend. It probably helped that I had more time off than normal. ***** I was reintroduced to a favorite word of mine. During a psychology class at UC Davis, my German professor told us about the word schadenfreude, which means something like, "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others." This word popped up on a punk site that I was reading. I remembered how cool I thought that word was, and now I can tell all my German-speaking friends (total: 1) about this word. <grins> ***** Just a note about my site: I have a Pictures page up. Enjoy! ***** Daily, I check out Gabe's blog on his site. He's an old high school friend. Well, as I was reading, I noticed that I found evidence to suggest that he is evil! Honest! The signs are all over his site (note the "666" with the number of entries):
Friday with Pam / Warped Tour - A Summary of My Enjoyment Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Last Friday, Pam invited me over to her house where she cooked dinner for us. She hadn't cooked dinner for me before, so I thought this would be fun yet interesting. Once I got over there to pick her up, we hopped over to Blockbuster to rent "The Gods Must Be Crazy", apparently only available on VHS. From there, we picked up some Jack Daniel's Hard Cola at Beverages & More and headed back to Albertson's for the food for dinner. The menu for the evening consisted of a green salad, mashed potatoes, and pork loins baked with brown sugar, raisins, and barbecue sauce. Pam did a great job in preparing and cooking this yummy meal! We rented "The Gods Must Be Crazy" because I told her that she had to see it. It's one of the better and funnier movies out there from the '80s. I watched it without a problem, but Pam fell asleep in the middle of it. Next time! Last Sunday, I survived the eight-hour marathon that is the Warped Tour. I mainly went to see the Dropkick Murphys, Rancid, the Suicide Machines, and Less Than Jake. I felt that there were plenty of bands to make the trip to Marysville worth it, so I made the trek. Of all the bands I was interested in seeing, they rated as the following:
In a sense, my "Missed" list is misleading, since I missed all but the last song and a half of the Suicide Machines' set. What I did hear, though, was really cool. I caught Throw Rag in the early part of the day, and they sounded like a late-70s punk band (more like a hard rock band, but still a certain punk-ish edge). I don't remember what Authority Zero was like, so I'll have to check them out further. Rancid received "Awesome" and "Disappointed" ratings for different reasons. They get an "Awesome" rating for not playing anything from the "Life Won't Wait" album. Their set list consisted of (in order of album appearance):
A little more from "...And Out Come the Wolves" than I'd care for, but still a cool set. There wasn't anything from the 2000 self-titled release, which was a minor surprise. I guess they were playing for the expected audience or something. The Disappointed rating for Rancid comes from the audio problems during their set. It seemed like the amps on the right-hand-side of the stage went out on occasion. Fortunately, they seemed to have fixed that for when the Dropkick Murphys went on stage. Technically, the Dropkick Murphys should get the same rating as Rancid. Their set was great:
Less Than Jake played on the stage next to where the Murphs were eventually going to play, but the coordinators told the Murphs to start, even though Less Than Jake was still playing. We couldn't even hear the first song or two (which, I think, was "For Boston" and "Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight"). Many people might give me crap for saying that Andrew W.K. was boring. Well, given that he wasn't exactly "punk" (for some reason, Bruce Springstein came to mind while I saw AWK's performance), he just didn't seem to exactly fit in and didn't fit what I expected. I'm sure if I approached his music in a different light I'd find him interesting and rather fun. Most of my money went to the Dropkick Murphys. I bought myself a really cool t-shirt. It's a red shirt with "Dropkick" above the design and "Murphys" below it. The design consists of two dragons (in Scottish caps) getting ready to fight each other with a boxing ring bell in between them. It's a really cool shirt and very appropriate for me, since my Chinese sign is the Dragon, and my color is red (red dragons are so cool). I got the hockey-pirate-themed patch for my collection and added a Dropkick Murphys bottle opener as well. I'm going to put a coat of spray-on protective rubber onto the handle to protect the design on it. My work friend, Ken, wanted the Boston Bruins-themed jersey with pirate logo, but they didn't have them for sale there. I did get the new album for him, though. I could have had something autographed by the Murphs, but the line was long and Ken Casey was notably absent. I found that funny, because I was absolutely certain I saw him backstage when Throw Rag performed. I did make two other purchases during the day. On one of the remote stages, a band called Throw Rag played. I saw them early in the day and plunked $10 down for their CD (also snagged a sticker). Just before I left, I spent another $10 on the Suicide Machine's new album, and I'm really loving that one! Expect a review of that sometime soon. Although the Used sucked royally in my ears (I'm not much for hardcore, I guess), their lead singer did something rather cool/stupid during their set. The stage had scaffolding on both ends that held up cloth and other stuff to close off the stage. It must have been three stories high. The lead singer climbed up the scaffolding and had to have been about a story or a story and a half up when he stopped. He waved down to the fans near the stage, motioning them to do something. Then, as the next song started, he jumped off and landed right into the crowd area! It looked really cool. All the crowd had to do was vacate the spot he would have landed, and he never would have done that stunt again. Nevertheless, he succeeded and eventually climbed out of the crowd and back on stage. I saw many people with rather nasty sunburns, and probably about half of the attendees must have been a little older than half my age. I don't believe too many people actually brought water with them; I saw one person collapse in line while trying to get the Dropkick Murphys' autographs (she was ok, though). I know I drank nearly 4.5 liters of water (my original 1.5L bottle and two fill-ups from the drinking fountains). There were plenty of places to roost in the shade, with a not-very-open vendor being a very spacious and popular choice. I spent a fair amount of time in there in the shade, waiting for desired bands' stage times to arrive. I never had the time, chance, or energy to poke fun at the PETA people who had a booth. I did give them a long glare. One really cool booth had some interesting stuff one could buy. They had action figures of Jesus (with wheels on the base so he can glide), Moses, and, one I almost bought, Sigmund Freud. The only problem with Sigmund is that it didn't come with a pipe or a notepad/pencil. That booth also had a Sex Pistols metal lunch box and "Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck" t-shirts (sorry, Adam; you'll have to get your own!). I had a good time of it. I think the only things I'd do differently would be to bring more water (so I wouldn't have to refill it as often), eat a little more (probably why I had the headache at the end), and pay closer attention to the bands' playing times (so I write down the Suicide Machine's set as starting at 12:30pm and not 2:30pm). I would also make sure that all of my skin receives sunblock, so that I don't end up with a couple of red strips around my neck like this time. I'd probably re-apply it after three hours instead of four, but I think I ended up ok otherwise.
Car Trouble / Suicide Machines defeat Rancid / Pam Update Thursday, July 24, 2003 My car had to undergo surgery last week. I took it in last Thursday to Braley & Graham Buick to find out why it was idling roughly, why it had the rare starting issue, and why my power steering fluid was still leaking.. A week ago Monday, I was parked at a Home Depot after running around a bit after my dentist appointment. When I found what I needed at Home Depot (a length of 1/4" doweling), I hopped into my car and tried to start it. No deal. It acted like my battery was dead, though I knew it had been replaced only a few months ago. I would turn the key, and though the clock would dim out like normal, nothing would happen under the hood. I had to go somewhere else, so I walked. I came back a little more than an hour later, and the car started up perfectly fine! I remember it starting funny like this before, but I didn't make note of it until then. It was running a bit rough, and it seemed like it would almost stall when I stopped at intersections and lights. The power steering fluid leaked consistently for several months now. I took it in to Braley & Graham a few months ago about it, and they replaced a metal pipe that had a hole in it. It rubbed against the body of the car and wore a hole through it. But, on my way back from Pam's house one night, I had to refill the reservoir once again. This time it was a hose and switch that needed replacing. Let's hope that it's fixed for a decent time. Next repairs: new muffler, new shocks. ***** Music has been nice to me lately. I bought the Suicide Machines' new album, "A Match and Some Gasoline" while at the Warped Tour, and that ended up being the best $10 I spent there. They presented a great half-hour of ska-punk with this album, including a "hidden track" at the end of the last track. I'll post a better review later near the end of this month. I've also heard some new songs by Rancid. As you might have read in my review of my Warped Tour visit earlier this month, I rather enjoyed their set despite the technical difficulties. On their site in the multimedia page, you can hear three songs from the new album, "Indestructible". I kind of liked the ska-ish "Red Hot Moon", and "Indestructible" was pretty decent, but the last song, "Back Up Against the Wall" didn't seem very good. I'm most likely not going to bother getting the album, since I stopped after that horrible "Life Won't Wait" garbage. Matt's talent just seems to be completely wasted with that band. ***** Not much going on in the Pam realm of things. We attended a co-worker's party and enjoyed a wonderful dinner and pool. We'll dine out somewhere this coming Saturday night, and I'll have her over for dinner next Wednesday. |
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