Happy Almost August, peoples. This past weekend was home to a festival called BoulderFest here in Rochester. Naturally, since you're dealing with me here, I was one of many musicians pulling at least double duty during the course of the fest.
It all started Friday afternoon. I played drums for Journey of Jasmine late that afternoon (JoJ was the second band to play BoulderFest this year. Not a bad time slot, either). I stuck around to see The Isotopes that night - those guys were awesome. It takes a lot of guts to cover Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" at all, let alone play it almost note for note perfectly.
Saturday, however, was The Day Of Madness. At around noontime, I took the stage playing percussion for my friend Dan Ball Jr. About three hours later, SMOCK finally took the stage and rocked the crap out of the place. I should know 'cause I definitely had sweat in my eyes a few times during the course of our set. But wait! - it doesn't end there. That night, I was invited to sit in on piano for the band CHEA! for their show (they got the band back together!) outside of the festival. So I did, and beat the crap out of a piano for about an hour and a half or so. At the end of the day, I was exhausted, my hands hurt, my legs were tired, and I probably smelled funny. Such a good day...
It doesn't end there. About 12:30 Sunday afternoon, I got a call from a friend of mine asking me to fill in for his band's percussionist. So, uh...I did. I scrambled down to his place for a quick rehearsal, went to BoulderFest again, and then found out their percussionist was actually going to make the show. But since they still wanted me to play and realized he and I played different hand drums, The Kitchen Sinks took the stage with two percussionists.
So there you have it. Five shows in three days. All in all, the shows went well - Journey of Jasmine especially so - and this weekend was completely amazing. Same time next year?
Monday, July 30, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Spectacular Losing Day
Yesterday - the day after Bastille Day - I witnessed two absolutely spectacular losses on the baseball diamond. I saw a minor league beatdown in person, then a major league milestone on my TV. When it comes to losing, I won yesterday.
Let's start with the afternoon game. Yesterday afternoon, my friend and Journey of Jasmine bandmate Mike and I attended the Rochester Red Wings game against the Indianapolis Indians. The Red Wings got KILLED to the tune of 16-3. Three runs were walked in, one run was plunked in, and a grand slam was hit in the top of the second inning. When the top of the third inning ended with the score 9-0 in favor of Indianapolis, home team devotion quickly turned into morbid fascination for me. That and I almost got the sign language interpreter lady to crack during the singing of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" by singing one syllable behind everybody else (Mike and I had moved up to the front row in the seventh inning, stealing vacated seats near home plate). All in all, the game was flat-out amazing...and it was Cal Ripken "jersey" night, so I got a free shirt out of it.
But that's not all! There was another team to watch! Last night's baseball game on ESPN (home of Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing Mankind Has Ever Seen) was the St. Louis Cardinals at the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies were going for the sweep and trying to avoid a spectacular milestone in futility: They were just one loss away from 10,000 defeats as a franchise. However, this was not Philadelphia's night. Albert Pujols, fresh from shaking off his massive (for him) home run drought, crushed a pitch to the deepest part of the ballpark. He'd hit another home run later that night, but that first one was spectacular. That and the next batter went deep on the first pitch he saw after that mammoth blast from Uncle Albert. All told, the Cardinals hit six home runs as a team, won 10-2 (giving up Philadelphia's two runs in the ninth inning), and sent the Phillies into previously uncharted territory: 10,000 losses. Sure, I had to sit through a bunch of stupid tie-ins to the ESPYs during the game - for the record, the guys who made "Coming up next, The ESPYs" signs and held them up at the ballpark in Philadelphia should get the crap kicked out of them - but seeing a milestone loss like that was worth the effort. And then I turned off my TV the instant The ESPYs started.
In summary: I witnessed two big losses yesterday. It was amazing. A fun time was had by me.
UPDATE: As I was link hunting for this post, I stumbled onto this: Not only was my local-ish Really Minor League Team, the Batavia Muckdogs, no-hit yesterday, they were at the receiving end of a perfect game! Yet another spectacular loss from Spectacular Losing Day. Life doesn't get much better than this...
...or does it?
Let's start with the afternoon game. Yesterday afternoon, my friend and Journey of Jasmine bandmate Mike and I attended the Rochester Red Wings game against the Indianapolis Indians. The Red Wings got KILLED to the tune of 16-3. Three runs were walked in, one run was plunked in, and a grand slam was hit in the top of the second inning. When the top of the third inning ended with the score 9-0 in favor of Indianapolis, home team devotion quickly turned into morbid fascination for me. That and I almost got the sign language interpreter lady to crack during the singing of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" by singing one syllable behind everybody else (Mike and I had moved up to the front row in the seventh inning, stealing vacated seats near home plate). All in all, the game was flat-out amazing...and it was Cal Ripken "jersey" night, so I got a free shirt out of it.
But that's not all! There was another team to watch! Last night's baseball game on ESPN (home of Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing Mankind Has Ever Seen) was the St. Louis Cardinals at the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies were going for the sweep and trying to avoid a spectacular milestone in futility: They were just one loss away from 10,000 defeats as a franchise. However, this was not Philadelphia's night. Albert Pujols, fresh from shaking off his massive (for him) home run drought, crushed a pitch to the deepest part of the ballpark. He'd hit another home run later that night, but that first one was spectacular. That and the next batter went deep on the first pitch he saw after that mammoth blast from Uncle Albert. All told, the Cardinals hit six home runs as a team, won 10-2 (giving up Philadelphia's two runs in the ninth inning), and sent the Phillies into previously uncharted territory: 10,000 losses. Sure, I had to sit through a bunch of stupid tie-ins to the ESPYs during the game - for the record, the guys who made "Coming up next, The ESPYs" signs and held them up at the ballpark in Philadelphia should get the crap kicked out of them - but seeing a milestone loss like that was worth the effort. And then I turned off my TV the instant The ESPYs started.
In summary: I witnessed two big losses yesterday. It was amazing. A fun time was had by me.
UPDATE: As I was link hunting for this post, I stumbled onto this: Not only was my local-ish Really Minor League Team, the Batavia Muckdogs, no-hit yesterday, they were at the receiving end of a perfect game! Yet another spectacular loss from Spectacular Losing Day. Life doesn't get much better than this...
...or does it?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
OK, Break's Over, Back To Work
How strange was yesterday? No baseball to speak of at all unless you lucked out and found the Triple-A All-Star Game on TV (International League 7, Pacific Coast League 5). But The Most Boring Day In Sports is now behind us, thank God. So, PLAY BALL!
Best record at the break: Boston Red Sox (53-34)
Worst record at the break: Tampa Bay Devil Rays (34-53)
Interestingly enough, the division leaders haven't been able to put much real estate between them and their opponents so far this season. The Red Sox have the biggest division lead at 10 games. The next largest is Milwaukee in the NL Central, 4 and a half games ahead of the Cubs. The other four divisions are much tighter than that - none of those division leaders are ahead by more than 2 and a half games. If this keeps up, then these division titles won't be decided until late September/early October, which is stressful for the teams but great for the fans.
Here's another attention grabber: The Philadelphia Phillies are about to lose their 10,000th game as a franchise. Right now, they're sitting at 9,999. They aren't playing tonight, but that grand defeat could come as early as tomorrow night when they host the St. Louis Cardinals.
Two other intriguing match-ups this weekend:
Colorado at Milwaukee - the NL West's fourth place Rockies would be in third in the NL Central, but only a half-game behind the Cubs.
Detroit at Seattle - four-game set between one of the best teams in the bigs and the team few people expected to be good out of the AL West.
Speaking of Seattle, did you see Ichiro's inside-the-park home run in the All-Star Game? How friggin' cool was that?! That and the bottom of the ninth made that the most watchable All-Star Game in years. But Paula Cole singing "God Bless America"? Talk about 10 years too late. Between her and Counting Crows (?!) playing at the Home Run Derby, I almost thought I went 10 years back in time or something. Hootie and The Blowfish must've been booked solid this week...
Here's your All-Star Snub: Erik Bedard, starting pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, leads the majors in strikeouts (149) but wasn't invited to San Francisco. His 3.40 ERA is good for 11th in the AL, just behind Chien-Ming Wang and just ahead of Josh Beckett. Incidentally, fellow Oriole Jeremy Guthrie is second in the AL with a 2.74 ERA. Go figure...
You're a kitty!
Best record at the break: Boston Red Sox (53-34)
Worst record at the break: Tampa Bay Devil Rays (34-53)
Interestingly enough, the division leaders haven't been able to put much real estate between them and their opponents so far this season. The Red Sox have the biggest division lead at 10 games. The next largest is Milwaukee in the NL Central, 4 and a half games ahead of the Cubs. The other four divisions are much tighter than that - none of those division leaders are ahead by more than 2 and a half games. If this keeps up, then these division titles won't be decided until late September/early October, which is stressful for the teams but great for the fans.
Here's another attention grabber: The Philadelphia Phillies are about to lose their 10,000th game as a franchise. Right now, they're sitting at 9,999. They aren't playing tonight, but that grand defeat could come as early as tomorrow night when they host the St. Louis Cardinals.
Two other intriguing match-ups this weekend:
Colorado at Milwaukee - the NL West's fourth place Rockies would be in third in the NL Central, but only a half-game behind the Cubs.
Detroit at Seattle - four-game set between one of the best teams in the bigs and the team few people expected to be good out of the AL West.
Speaking of Seattle, did you see Ichiro's inside-the-park home run in the All-Star Game? How friggin' cool was that?! That and the bottom of the ninth made that the most watchable All-Star Game in years. But Paula Cole singing "God Bless America"? Talk about 10 years too late. Between her and Counting Crows (?!) playing at the Home Run Derby, I almost thought I went 10 years back in time or something. Hootie and The Blowfish must've been booked solid this week...
Here's your All-Star Snub: Erik Bedard, starting pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, leads the majors in strikeouts (149) but wasn't invited to San Francisco. His 3.40 ERA is good for 11th in the AL, just behind Chien-Ming Wang and just ahead of Josh Beckett. Incidentally, fellow Oriole Jeremy Guthrie is second in the AL with a 2.74 ERA. Go figure...
You're a kitty!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Requiem For Some Laundry
I'm not the first to say this on the sports blogosphere, but it's worth noting: The Chicago White Sox are bad this year. Really bad. This team merely two years removed from winning a World Series title have aged quickly this season (four everyday players are on the DL right now) and their pitching is not in the same place it was during their championship campaign. Earlier this week, the White Sox took a 6-2 lead into the eighth inning against the Baltimore Orioles. Game over, right? Nope. The Orioles scored three runs in the eighth and two runs in the ninth off of Sox relievers (closer Bobby Jenks officially blew the save in the ninth and took the loss) and won the game 6-5. But here's another scary statistic: The White Sox were 4-14 in interleague play. You know, The National League's Exercise In Futility That The American League Wins Every Year Not Named The All-Star Game. They only won FOUR games against the NL this year! And it's not like they had tough Interleague opponents, either - They played the Cubs (lost five of six, getting swept in the series in their own ballpark), Astros (lost 2 of 3), Phillies (lost all 3), Pirates (lost 2 of 3), and Marlins (lost 2 of 3). Murderers' Row Of Mediocrity right there...
Possibly the scariest statistic of them all: As of today, they only have one more win than the Kansas City Royals. One. That's it.
And then there was yesterday. Yesterday, the Minnesota Twins visited the south side of Chicago for a doubleheader and kicked the crap out of them. The first game was a football score - Minnesota 20, Chicago 14. The Sox committed five errors and the Twins DIDN'T score in the sixth and ninth innings. The scary thing is it would've been more lopsided if a Twins batter didn't ground into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the eighth.
But that was the first game. But what happened in the nightcap? Simply put, the Twins kept hitting but the White Sox stopped. Morneau went deep three times (hat trick?) as the Twins piled up one more home run (six) than Sox hits (five) in game two. Twins 12, Sox 0.
If that wasn't enough, the White Sox will have to deal with BOOF! in today's game. Good luck to 'em. Poor southsiders - they gotta deal with Cubs fans all summer long 'cause the better Chicago team is playing in Wrigleyville this year...
This guy is pretty awesome
Possibly the scariest statistic of them all: As of today, they only have one more win than the Kansas City Royals. One. That's it.
And then there was yesterday. Yesterday, the Minnesota Twins visited the south side of Chicago for a doubleheader and kicked the crap out of them. The first game was a football score - Minnesota 20, Chicago 14. The Sox committed five errors and the Twins DIDN'T score in the sixth and ninth innings. The scary thing is it would've been more lopsided if a Twins batter didn't ground into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded in the eighth.
But that was the first game. But what happened in the nightcap? Simply put, the Twins kept hitting but the White Sox stopped. Morneau went deep three times (hat trick?) as the Twins piled up one more home run (six) than Sox hits (five) in game two. Twins 12, Sox 0.
If that wasn't enough, the White Sox will have to deal with BOOF! in today's game. Good luck to 'em. Poor southsiders - they gotta deal with Cubs fans all summer long 'cause the better Chicago team is playing in Wrigleyville this year...
This guy is pretty awesome
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Happy Fourth of July!
Woo hoo! It's Independence Day! In honor of America's Founding Fathers, let's celebrate! Drink some beer, cook some meat, watch some baseball, and blow some crap up (or at least watch other people blow crap up)!
Enjoy the holiday.
Enjoy the holiday.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Happy Canada Day!
Yep, you read that right. July 1st is Canada Day. So crack open a Molson or Labatt and watch hockey highlights on YouTube in honor of our neighbors to the north! Beauty, eh?
Speaking of hockey: Apparently, Daniel Briere is a Flyer. He signed a hefty 8-year deal with a "no-movement clause" to play in Philadelphia. That leaves me to say this: What in the world were they thinking? 8 years?! Don't get me wrong - I'm gonna miss seeing him in a Sabres' uniform and I wish him the best of luck in Flyer Country. BUT, you can almost guarantee he doesn't have 8 full seasons left in him. At least not without him turning fragile and missing at least 30 games a year at the tail end of that deal. Yes, Briere is a good offensive presence and should work well with Simon Gagne, but this is almost DiPietro-like insanity from the Flyers' front office here. I'm still completely confused by the deal...
I just found out Chris Drury and Scott Gomez both signed with the New York Rangers. I'll definitely miss Drury in a Slugs jersey. That dude is simply awesome. These are fantastic pickups for the Blueshirts. I'll leave the rest of the analysis from the Rangers' perspective to McNally...especially since I know full well he's probably having a moral quandary because Gomez used to play for the Devils.
So what's next for the Sabres? Slug Country was hoping that at least one of the two co-captains would stick around in Western New York. But since neither of them stayed - but Adam Mair resigned! - this clearly means the team belongs to guys like Tim Connelly, Ales Kotalik, Thomas Vanek, Maxim Afinogenov, and Jason Pominville. In hindsight, the writing was more than likely on the wall for the co-captains last year - Briere in particular - when Connelly got a contract extension before the beginning of last season. So overall, I have very mixed emotions about today. On one hand, I know full well I will miss watching Chris Drury and Daniel Briere. But on the other hand, Pominville-Afinogenov-Connelly is a REALLY scary line, so I still like this team. I'm personally hoping they can keep Vanek (though he's restricted) and Zubrus right now...
I'm watching baseball right now. Because NOTHING says "Canada Day" like a baseball game in Detroit, Michigan. Though reigning AL MVP Justin Morneau is Canadian...
The new Devin Townsend album is friggin' awesome. Full review coming soon.
Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again
Speaking of hockey: Apparently, Daniel Briere is a Flyer. He signed a hefty 8-year deal with a "no-movement clause" to play in Philadelphia. That leaves me to say this: What in the world were they thinking? 8 years?! Don't get me wrong - I'm gonna miss seeing him in a Sabres' uniform and I wish him the best of luck in Flyer Country. BUT, you can almost guarantee he doesn't have 8 full seasons left in him. At least not without him turning fragile and missing at least 30 games a year at the tail end of that deal. Yes, Briere is a good offensive presence and should work well with Simon Gagne, but this is almost DiPietro-like insanity from the Flyers' front office here. I'm still completely confused by the deal...
I just found out Chris Drury and Scott Gomez both signed with the New York Rangers. I'll definitely miss Drury in a Slugs jersey. That dude is simply awesome. These are fantastic pickups for the Blueshirts. I'll leave the rest of the analysis from the Rangers' perspective to McNally...especially since I know full well he's probably having a moral quandary because Gomez used to play for the Devils.
So what's next for the Sabres? Slug Country was hoping that at least one of the two co-captains would stick around in Western New York. But since neither of them stayed - but Adam Mair resigned! - this clearly means the team belongs to guys like Tim Connelly, Ales Kotalik, Thomas Vanek, Maxim Afinogenov, and Jason Pominville. In hindsight, the writing was more than likely on the wall for the co-captains last year - Briere in particular - when Connelly got a contract extension before the beginning of last season. So overall, I have very mixed emotions about today. On one hand, I know full well I will miss watching Chris Drury and Daniel Briere. But on the other hand, Pominville-Afinogenov-Connelly is a REALLY scary line, so I still like this team. I'm personally hoping they can keep Vanek (though he's restricted) and Zubrus right now...
I'm watching baseball right now. Because NOTHING says "Canada Day" like a baseball game in Detroit, Michigan. Though reigning AL MVP Justin Morneau is Canadian...
The new Devin Townsend album is friggin' awesome. Full review coming soon.
Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again Do it again
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