Trip Report: Seven Mary Three show 6/29/07

Since I am supposed to be in a chat for one of my classes right now, I'm going to multi-task and blog on Friday night's festivities.

The band: Seven Mary Three, an all time favorite of mine. More on them in a moment.

The venue was here. This was a unique place to see a show, here's a link to a photo of the stage area - it was gigantic! If this place wanted, they could definitely host very large concerts. I suspect the place would hold well north of a couple thousand people. The sound was excellent, much better than the band's last visit to this area.

The set-up for the stage was a little strange though. The stage was in a large area that is set up kind of like a gazebo, elevated about 10 feet or so from ground level. There were steep, narrow stairs surrounding the stage on all sides that would allow for people to walk up towards the stage (this becomes significant later, does it ever!). The bad part was that there were tables and chairs around the area facing the front of the stage. There was probably 40 or 50 feet of empty space and then maybe 100 or so tables with chairs behind that. In my experience, I've found that the majority of people will sit around during the show if given the chance and that saps a lot of the energy out of a live performance. I generally don't like it and think that was the case for this show as well. There certainly were some people on their feet and in front of the stage, but most stayed at the tables and watched from a distance.

The band was great. A new drummer, Michael Levesque, joined the group back in February. Last time I saw the group at the end of March, he was obviously still getting up to speed. Friday's show the entire band was in a great mood and played a great set. Mike's drumming was much more confident, as he obviously had been rehearsing Cumbersome with the band each night in their living rooms. The set list was as follows:
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Rock Crown

Was A Ghost

Settle Up

Wait

Headstrong

Roderigo

Last Kiss

Each Little Mystery (Jason and Thomas)

Times Like These (Jason and Thomas)

My My

Tail Lights Fade (Buffalo Tom cover)

Cumbersome

Sleepwalking

Shelf Life

Dislocated

Breakdown

Eleanor Rigby (Beatles cover)

Waters Edge

Rockin in the Free World (Neil Young cover)

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Highlights of the setlist included a great version of Times Like These with some incredible new lyrics from Jason and the Buffalo Tom cover, which I'd never heard before. There was great energy from the band, who really seemed to enjoy the show. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few gems from the crowd.

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At one point late in the show, one of the fans literally walked up the steps on one side of the stage during the middle of a song and had a few words with Casey Daniels, the bass player. She was clearly requesting a song - Casey kindly took her request while continuing to play. Beyond this, the crowd really got into things during the last two songs, most folks were up out of their seats and a few especially drunk people came up to the front and center stage area. One particularly rotund and overserved young lady (I'm being generous here) climbed about halfway up the stairs and was really having a great time dancing. At some point, she was joined by another inebriated cohort and they decided that they should turn and dance for the appreciative crowd. Do you smell that???, that's sarcasm. The band seemed to get a kick out of it and actually stopped playing in the middle of Free World twice. Our dancing friends scarcely noticed the lack of music and kept on gyrating. While visually disturbing, it was quite entertaining and put a fun cap on the evening's events. Here's a link to the madness.

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All in all, it was a good show. A pretty standard setlist with a couple of highlights, a medium attendance from the band's strong midwest hardcore fanbase and some drunken frivolity to top it all off!

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Until next time.

Ace

And now for something a little lighter...

I'll probably put a few of my own writings in here at some point. But I'll definitely put stuff from others. For example, many of my friends and I enjoy the occasional limerick. So, I'd like to pick a couple out here and there for the old blog. Why a limerick you ask?

The limerick's callous and crude,

Its morals distressingly lewd;

It's not worth the reading

By persons of breeding -

It's designed for us vulgar and rude.

----

These can be found in "A Thousand and One Limericks" by Chartwell Books, 2004. I'll try to keep it clean.

--

There was a young farmer named Morse

Who fell madly in love with his horse.

Said his wife, "You rapscallion,

that horse is a stallion -

This constitutes grounds for divorce."

--

New hilarious show on TV: 'Flight of the Conchords Kinda like Extras meets Spinal Tap, great stuff.

Into the thick of it

Crikey, tonight marks the end of my first 2 weeks back in school. It's going very fast.

First observation, it's a very good thing I am taking a math class this semester. My six week semester is actually eight weeks long, apparently I need some help with basic counting skills. So, I'm almost a quarter of the way done already!

Second observation, my stats (palindrome alert) class is not really all that difficult. I took some Six Sigma courses at work and much of the material we are covering in this class. Last night I spent 2 romantic hours with my good friend the standard deviation equation - you complex bastard you! - and came out a winner. The teacher lets us use our homework during the quizzes and there is a formula cheat sheet we're allowed to use during tests. We won't have the first test until after July 4th but I think I'm in ok shape so far in this class.

I will say that I am falling a bit behind in my lit class, keeping up with the reading is proving to be pretty difficult, especially when what you are reading was written roughly 500 years ago. Old Jeff Chaucer was one ribaldrous fellow it appears, or at least his Wife of Bath sure is. Anyhow, I expect to spend some major time over the next several days reading and writing for this course. Anyone have any cliff notes comparing Beowulf to the Star Wars trilogy? Yeah, you know you love it!

My other class is teaching us methods of research. It's not the most riveting topic but the teacher is quite a trip. I swear they plucked him straight out of the movie Snatch. From South England, he is a bundle of boundless energy and I literally spent my entire last class laughing at his antics.

This class is held in the library and on the way to our classroom we pass a bank of PCs that the community is allowed to use. There were a group of kids about high school freshman age at these PCs watching porn. Now I'm not talking about your mild, show your rack, could almost be on the cover of Maxim porn. I'm talking hardcore stuff that I won't even begin to describe. Crazy!!!! Apparently, there's some sort of freedom issue where they're allowed to do this. So one girl comes into the class and says they should be stopped or something to that effect. Teach explains they can't and then proceeds to spend the next 2 1/2 hours every so often teasing the girl for being a prude and into porn and stuff like that. It was all good natured and pretty funny. He tends to do something like that so far in each class and I'm usually laughing the whole time.

I haven't seen any grades yet from this class so I'm not sure how difficult it will be. I am sure that there will be a pretty hefty amount of work to do with this one. I expect this will actually help quite a bit with future classes though and I am pretty happy about that.

All in all, I'm keeping my head above water and looking forward already to the break between summer and fall semester. For the fall, I've submitted my requests for schools to be placed in for my 2 clinical studies courses and signed up for another Lit class I need to finish as a pre-req. I am still trying to determine if I will take one more class. I think I will but need to finalize. Wow that's going to be nuts.

A strange thing - in a couple of instances, I've tried to sign up for classes and they've already been filled. Since I'm on such an accelerated program, I've typically found myself asking around various administrators and teachers to see if they can squeeze me into the class. Each time I've been able to get in. Psychologically, it's always been a bit of a rush to get into something that theoretically I should not have been able to. I guess we always want something more when we can't have it. I'm not sure if that really applies to me in general but certainly so in these cases.

Should have plenty to report on early next week as it's going to be a full weekend.

Until next time...

Ace

CD review - Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

So one of my many loves is music. I've always been very into music and with a background that has included working in radio, I've got some history with a lot of different artists and songs. I've often been accused of being a human jukebox, able to break into song relating phrases in conversation to song lyrics. Most of my music background is in rock, although I've got some hip hop and country thrown in for fun as well. And I'm embarrassed to admit, a childhood steeped in terrible pop music. I'd like to think that I've grown out of a lot of that but it hasn't been erased from the old jukebox upstairs. (I'm not afraid to admit that my first cassette was Billy Ocean's Suddenly, although any hope for credibility I'm sure is dashed).

Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to try a CD review. I've never done one but seems like it could be fun. Let me just say that I'm certainly no expert on the band I'm about to review, although I am a fan with several of their CDs. So, I hope I don't offend anyone with the comments to follow. We'll see how this goes, if I enjoy it and/or get positive feedback, I may try another in the weeks that follow. When I think of critics, I generally think of being stuffy or trying too hard so I'll try not to make it too pretentious despite my love for big words.

The CD is Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight released on Warner Bros Records and produced by Rick Rubin. Rubin is a legendary producer (Wow, look at that list of titles!) and this is his first work with Linkin Park. I've been a big fan of Rubin's, particularly his work with Johnny Cash. I'm also partial to a few of the other CDs he's worked on, including BloodSugarSexMagik from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Toxicity from System of a Down.

The band admits in the liner notes that Rubin pushes them in the making of this CD. His influence can be clearly heard in several different spots on the CD, which I'll point out later. One other item before getting to the music: the liner notes for this CD are fantastic. I'm fascinated by the art of music making and the play by play provided in the margins of the notes really provide a lot of insight into the band's creative process.

The opening track is called Wake. It's one of those brief, instrumental openings. While the music is fine, I generally don't care for these type of openings. I'm much more interested in the more substantive songs. The song is about 2 minutes long and builds energy and momentum for the real opening of the CD.

Track 2 is Given Up - a nice adrenaline burst of a song that Linkin Park is known for. Chester Bennington's unmistakeable voice adds a lot to this song. The lyrics are a little simplistic but minus a few f-bombs, this would be a modern radio hit. There are some strong similarities between this song and a couple tracks on Toxicity in how the music changes direction dramatically for a short stretch about halfway through. It definitely makes the song more interesting.

Track 3 is Leave Out All The Rest - this is about as ballad-y as you're going to get from Linkin Park. Not a favorite in the first few early listens. Lyrically the song is ok but there doesn't seem to be a lot of heart in Chester's delivery.

Track 4 is Bleed It Out - finally we get to hear from Mike Shinoda, the other singer in the band. Even though it is only the 3rd song with lyrics, it feels like a long time to go without hearing Shinoda. This is LP at it's best - Shinoda rapping the verse and Bennington belting out the chorus in a frenetic burst of energy that you can't sit still through. This will be a hit.

Track 5 is Shadow Of The Day and is extremely interesting. The beginning smells a bit of Nine Inch Nails (you get me closer to God!) and then I swear turns into With or Without You from U2. Sometimes I hear so much other music in what I hear. I also liken this a lot to what Green Day did when they came out with that "I hope you had the time of your life" song. They were mostly known for a bit of an underground punk sound and really went very mainstream with that one song. I see this song doing the same for LP. This is a very catchy song and one that is very likely to get annihilated with overplay from modern radio. By the end of the song you'll be singing along to the chorus - a very strong effort.

Track 6 is What I've Done - funky beginning with a piano hook that sounds a bit like the music from the movie "Halloween" (also similar to piano in a Local H song from Pack Up The Cats). This song wasn't particularly striking in any other way but solid.

Track 7 is a different story - Titled Hands Held High, it's a war protest song. It's very interesting to me how many songs I've seen come from the current Iraq war. Besides this one, I'm aware of the new Capital G from Nine Inch Nails, President Forever from Local H and an entire album of protest song remakes from A Perfect Circle. I'm sure there are many more but it's interesting to see how much reaction there has been from the music community. I'm interested too that there haven't been many songs in support of the war. I suppose that's pretty typical but strikes me as a bit strange. This is a good song, with some nice effects like the military sounding drumbeat at the beginning and the church choir like ending.

Track 8 - No More Sorrow - The heavy industrial guitar and drums in this song are pretty dark - there's another SOAD-like mid-song transition. I guess it's Rubin's way of inserting a bridge in the song, certainly a pretty unique device. Angry song, just the kind I sometimes like! This is not the best song on the album but not too bad.

Track 9 - Valentine's Day - another keyboard/piano sound, I like the music in this one. This song has a nice pace and features Bennington. I like the lyrics a lot in this one although the Valentine's Day thing is a little cliche. Very melancholy.

Track 10 - In Between - wow, I really like this song. I like the way the lyrics are similar in sections but then altered near the end. I've always found this to be an effective way to emphasize a point and have used in some of my own writing. This is another softer sound from LP and seems to be a real departure from previous CDs. This one works well.

Track 11 - In Pieces - great line "Your lips say that you love but your eyes say that you hate" - fantastic! Bennington mixes up the lyrical delivery very well in this track, from straight singing to his more aggressive, guttural sound. The music is quick and there is a slightly almost reggae sound to parts of it. The guitar inclusion really adds to the sound and turns this into a complex mish mash of sounds that I liked. Another very nice effort.

Track 12 - The Little Things Give You Away - I was stunned to hear some acoustic guitar in an LP song! Some argue that all song lyrics are poetry but this song strikes me as a poem that was written and later turned into a song. Bennington tries to stretch his vocal range with the singing in this song - not sure if I like it yet or not. I'll probably need to give this one a few more listens.

Overall, this album is much different from Linkin Park CDs in the past. There is much more of a mixture of sounds, from classic LP to more pop-infused tracks and a lot slower overall tempo. It sounds to me like a group of guys that are maturing in life and their music is reflecting that change. Rubin's influence definitely plays to that quite a bit as well I'm sure. There are several definite high points in the CD, surrounded by several others that didn't really stand out to me. I would have liked to have heard some more songs with both singers participating as this record is very Chester-heavy. One of the things I like most about LP is their ability to blend the 2 different singer sounds together and this record gets away from that. Overall, I like the CD and will give it a solid B.

Wow, that was pretty fun. I think I'll do that again although I may try for a bit more brevity in future efforts. I welcome all feedback and would be happy to take suggestions on future CDs to review.

Caught with my pants down - almost!

So I forgot one little tidbit about the 5k I ran in on Sunday.

When running, I usually wear these shorts that are typical athletic shorts - lightweight, drawstring, run of the mill shorts. So Sunday am, as I'm preparing to go to the race, I grab a pair and put them on and a typical t-shirt.

I start the race and 3 steps into the race, they start to sag. Just slipping down from the jostling of the running. I grab the drawstring and tighten them up as much as I can. 3 more steps and they start falling. Tighten the drawstring again, they start falling again. Great! Well, I sure as heck don't want to stop running. And I definitely don't want to subject the several hundred others participating to a wardrobe malfunction. So, I grab the drawstring up in my left hand and proceed to complete the entire race holding my shorts up by the drawstring. Sheesh!

The shorts were disposed of immediately upon my return home.

On health / on the edge

On health

Have you seen the movie 'A Perfect Storm'? There are a couple of really dramatic scenes where the dude who plays Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore tells us of the convergence of weather patterns creating the monster storm that will eventually sink the fishing boat that George Clooney and Marky Mark are on. Oh the humanity! (I know it is at least based on a true story and don't mean to make light of the plight of the real people who were involved in the incident. I'm more poking fun at the over-dramatization that Hollywood spins into nearly everything it touches). The reason I bring it up is I think that old Shooter could just as easily be talking about my family's health history.

Dad - Diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart problems and strokes. Mom - heart attack at 35, significant back problems, multiple bypasses, stint implants, medication, etc to deal with heart issues. I have an uncle who died of a heart attack at 32 (although drug use probably played a significant role) and a sister who died in her 40s from a diabetes related incident. All in all, not a pretty picture. I've been pretty diligent about keeping up with the annual physicals, which helped identify an issue with high cholesterol (shocker!!! see family history above). Upon learning of this condition about 2 1/2 years ago, my doctor indicated I would need to improve my eating and exercise habits dramatically and immediately or would be forced to go onto long term medication to control the cholesterol. I felt like I was, and still am, far too young for this sort of a pharmaceutical regimen, so I took doc seriously.

By sticking to a low cholesterol diet and working out, I was able to shed about 35 pounds over 4 months or so and upon re-checking, had reigned in the cholesterol to a level that was just below the danger zone. Since then, I've done a pretty good job of keeping the weight in the right vicinity and largely maintaining the diet. Exercise has been a bit more spotty but I've been on again off again keeping up with it. Another recent physical has me thinking about it again as my diet had slipped a little and I hadn't been working out as regularly as I would like. So, I've begun to run again and actually participated in a 5k run yesterday. Damn I'm sore! I've been running for about 4 weeks regularly again, up to 2.5 miles at a clip but I guess that extra .6 miles makes a big difference. My time was 29 minutes even, a couple minutes worse than my best ever but I felt pretty good about it. I plan to continue participating in these, I'll post results here to track my progress (and hopefully improvement). If I remember correctly, my best time is about 27:30 so I'm definitely in the neighborhood.

On the edge

One big challenge to keeping up this discipline will be the fact that I start class TONIGHT! 3 hours of Basic Stats, woohoo!!!!! I hope I'll be able to keep my eyes open. This course is just to fulfill a program entry requirement for my Master's program. Apparently the math class I took as an undergrad didn't fulfill the need. I'm not expecting it to be extremely difficult as when I purchased the textbook, the description said it is often used for high school classes. I'm hopeful that the course will help me with the math involved in my poker playing and I'd be lying if I didn't say that was at least partly the reason why I chose this class. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

I'm sure I'll post again either later this week or over the weekend with an update on week one of classes.

Until next time.

Ace

Catching up

Picking up where I left off in my last post...

One other item my family had been considering was a move to warmer climate. I've lived in the midwest my whole life but the better half grew up in a warmer locale. We had often talked of moving somewhere more temperate and this transition seemed like the perfect time as our kids had not yet entered school.

The job hunt was really going nowhere so I really began to focus on the teaching option. I researched several local options as well as another city I really had an eye on: Las Vegas. Real estate in Vegas has escalated quite a bit, but is still somewhat affordable. The climate is definitely warmer than the midwest. Not to mention I've got a particular affinity for poker - expect to hear more on that topic in future posts. I thought I could possibly find a job as a dealer in one of the casinos - a flexible job to hold while in school. The better half also seemed interested, despite having never visited. A few other pro-Vegas options included an accelerated program that would allow me to begin teaching full time within one year and information I'd heard that children get full tuition paid at state schools thanks to casino revenues.

In the end, Vegas turned out to be too much turmoil all at once. Selling the house and finding jobs for two would be just too much to do at once, particularly with no local support system such as friends or family around. My career as a gambler would have to take a back seat to reality.

One local option began to stand out. The local state school was very economical. Other advantages included the ability to get started early, beginning with courses in Summer term 2007. And, through much pestering and persistence, I was able to get my course work accelerated so that student teaching would be an option in Fall 2008. This is much quicker than anticipated as early research into local schools had me looking at Fall 2009. This was an optimistic turn of events for me and really got me excited. Additionally, it looked like I would be able to continue working full time while going through all coursework up until the point I would have to student teach.

One other component of the master plan. The better half will have to abandon the role of full time parent and turn instead into full time parent and part time employee. Again, more on this topic in the future but this will prove to be a major transition for the family. And that pretty much catches you up to where we are today. There was much consternation and work involved just to get to this point but excitement is at an all time high.

One week from today, I begin what I imagine will be an arduous process. Summer semester features 3 classes, in a classroom Monday thru Thursday 6 - 9 pm plus one additional online course. Fortunately, this will only last for about 6 weeks, since the semester is so short. However, fall looks daunting as well, with 4 classes during the fall term, including two teaching clinical courses. I'm lucky to be able to get it all done so quickly though, as this program normally takes two years. So the next week will be spent working ahead on my online course and enjoying having a little bit of free time until class begins. And recovering from my immunization today :-)

Until next time.

Ace

Let there be light

So, I probably should have started this blog about 6 months ago as I have undergone a pretty dramatic amount of introspection and life changing decision-making in that time. So let me hit the rewind button.....

Almost 8 months ago, my family added a member. My job had been quite hectic and busy during the months leading up to this momentous occasion and I had decided that when the day arrived, I would put family first. "The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray". Not only did I not slow down, I actually returned to work early from my paternity leave. I knew that something had to change.

I had spent the past several years contemplating my career and been on the edge of making the leap, even initiating a job search. A few things happened that led me to give the old job one more good faith effort to revive my career. See, I had started off with a bang, promotion after promotion, raise after raise, AVP by age 26, the sky is the limit.

Somewhere along the way, I got derailed. I think the company didn't believe I could go further and I vascillated between busting my butt and looking in other directions as my ascent slowed. However, career inertia was the primary culprit in how I got here, 11 years later. Add on to this fact that our business had turned due south for several years, leading to terrible salary increases and bonuses, dramatic restructuring and upheaval, unbelievable turnover, incredible business ineptitude....

So, post paternity leave, I knew it was time to go. Where and when, I was still trying to figure out. But I had to go.

For the past several years, as I have toyed with the idea of moving in a different direction, one appealling option that came to mind was teaching. The schedule is fantastic. The ability to work with youth and serve as a leader and role model to students was also very appealling to me. And the ability to see and feel the direct societal impact got my juices flowing. Of course, there were two little problems:

One: I would need to get certified to teach. I did some research and while there were some programs that would allow me to go straight into the classroom, they involved a great deal of commuting and giving up a lot of flexibility as far as career choices early in my teaching career. That meant I was going to have to go back to school. More on this later.

Two: I would be taking a dramatic paycut, greater than 50%. With 3 kids and a stay at home better half, this was a pretty major problem.

This seems like a good place to break. A little bit of housekeeping; I'm really starting this blog to chronicle my journey from a professional fleeing corporate America (aka corporate flunky) to becoming a teacher. I expect in the early stages to be updating this blog frequently, at least weekly but probably more frequent than that. Beyond chronicling this passage, I also want to examine and flesh out some of the other things bouncing around inside my head. I expect topics to vary widely - I hope that is interesting to anyone who may take the time to read. I would like this to be thought provoking and entertaining at the same time. On occasion I take myself a bit too seriously, other times I'm a bit too silly. Hopefully we'll find a good middle ground here

Until next time

Ace