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Coachella Day One
Posted 3:36 PM, Apr 30, 2006 |
One day of Coachella down, posting from the beautiful Quality Inn in Palm Springs, CA. Yesterday I think the temperature peaked at about 95 degrees, but a fair amount of time was spent in the shade, and we didn’t get started at the festival until after 4pm, I think, so the sun was already waning just a little.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was absolutely packed. Good show - I think my musically-inclined traveling companion and I caught most of the show. Couldn’t see much, though.
TV on the Radio was good, although I found myself liking the old songs better than the new stuff. And maybe liking their recordings better than their live show. But still a good show.
Then, at the main stage, caught a chicken gyro and most of Sigur Ros, which was very satisfying, sitting on the grass. We were a fair distance away, but they have two delightful monitors, so we were able to see everything perfectly, and the sound was, well, still really loud.
Let’s see. Then Franz Ferdinand at the main stage, which was excellent - maybe the best performance of the day. Very good, very tight band, good energy, good song selection for the most part. Really fantastic.
Caught the end of one song of Cat Power. My pessimistic companion is an anti-fan of Cat Power, and I’m a middle-of-the-road fan, but with Cat Power was a nice strings section, a piano, some good instrumentalists. Even she was impressed with the one song we heard - I overheard her saying to her sister that she would have liked to see more. I pretended not to hear her say that, but I did.
Then Living Things, some cocky, swaggering band with a poor little boy doing keyboards, shaking some bells, and general trying to endure the surely-withering experience of touring with a bunch of cocksure performers. Very unimpressive - like the outline of a shadow cast by a silhouette of the Rolling Stones.
The Rakes were good, but we didn’t watch much of them - I don’t know much about them, but they seemed like they were having a good time. The lead singer was an angular fellow, like a parallelogram in motion. Small crowd, due to:
Daft Punk. Didn’t catch much of this either, but clearly the biggest draw of the first day. Tons of people flocking from everywhere, causing me to have a dream about zombies last night. Not kidding. And they (Daft Punk, not the zombies) were dressed in these goofy metallic spacesuits. The presentation was pretty excellent.
Getting ready to leave for today’s festival activities. An update tomorrow, probably from Salt Lake City. And pictures to follow in the next couple of days, when we get back to Minneapolis.
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Salt Lake City
Posted 7:52 PM, Apr 28, 2006 |
Thoughts from the Salt Lake City airport include:
- The ticket agent / gate attendant for one of the gates here in the E concourse sounds as if she’s about to cry with each announcement she makes. It’s sad. And unsettling.
- Men’s bathrooms are unpleasant. People spitting in the urinals, cursing, making obscene comments. Even the automatic faucet, when turning off, sputtered and sounded distinctly like farting.
- A woman that was sitting next to me was explaining to someone why her husband, also seated nearby, was trying to reserve a car, rather than her. “I always lose my driver’s license,” she said, laughing. She was amazingly flippant about “always” losing her driver’s license.
This was going to be my first remote post, all the way from Utah, but unfortunately my well-intentioned companion could not get the wireless connection to work here. Numerous tries. Invalid IP addresses. Passwords required. Credit card numbers asked for. Blood samples taken. And still, no wireless.
So, this post will reach you in due time. When reading it, please close your eyes and picture salty Mormons.
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Coachella and Animal Abuse
Posted 12:00 PM, Apr 27, 2006 |
This weekend: Coachella. Flying into Palm Springs tomorrow, flying back to MSP on Monday, trying not to get insanely:
- dehydrated
- sunburned.
So I guess that didn’t really require a list.
Maybe there will be some photos from the weekend? Maybe! I think there will be a lot more photos when I actually get to LA. We shall see.
Wouldn’t that be funny if I thought I was moving to Los Angeles, but was really moving to Louisiana? Funny in the same way that small kittens being beaten is funny, which is to say: not at all.
Speaking of which: On Craigslist Los Angeles, someone was trying to find a veterinary student to sever her puppy’s vocal cords for $20. Several people posted saying she should have something severed so she doesn’t procreate.
But this is evidence that harming animals is not funny at all. Which is really my point.
And Coachella. That was my real point.
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Moving Update
Posted 12:40 PM, Apr 21, 2006 |
Things are rolling along here in YoG-country. Preparing to move takes a lot of, well, preparation. Boxes are being filled, utilities are being cancelled, things are being rented, sold, processed, sold and processed, rented and processed, and sold and rented. It takes a lot of energy to move across the country, or even halfway there.
As a result, look at the last time I posted something meaningful to this website. Quite a while. Things will pick up once your host gets settled in a little bit. Then things will really happen, maybe, with photos and funny stories about the time I saw Bebe Neuwirth riding her bicycle along the beach, humming the theme song to Frasier. But until then, slow going. Stay tuned.
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Still Selling
Posted 8:50 AM, Apr 14, 2006 |
Not to harp or anything, but the for-sale list has been updated with some new items - vaccum, wine rack, turntable, etc. - so you can click here or scroll down to check that out. Thanks.
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Brief Observation #1
Posted 9:55 AM, Apr 10, 2006 |
The tall, gray-haired fellow who works in the cafeteria in my office building sounds a lot like actor Rip Torn.
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