Flogging Molly’s album Float has been on heavy repeat since Lollapalooza.
Monthly Archive for August, 2008
It’s that time of year where I can’t believe the summer is almost over. I’ve always looked forward to August because of my birthday and the state fair. But a part of me cringes at the thought of it because it always the crest of summer just before fall and school starting.
I am a full grown adult (plus a little belly) and I still get that ‘first day of school’ feeling every once in a while, even though I work year round. I still vividly remember the first day of fourth grade. My family had just moved across town and my brother was entering kindergarten. He cried like there was no tomorrow just before he had to get on the bus. I remember awkwardly trying to calm him down the best a nine year old could do.
Weird that I can still remember that, but I would have to Google the formula for pythagorean’s theorem.
The cool thing about fourth grade is that I would make friendships that still carry on today. Some of the most intelligent guys I know came from that year in school.
I know I am on kind of a tangent, but Snow Patrol is playing and I am enjoying a cold root beer. I’ll try to relate this back to August.
So August, it’s my new year’s day. It’s always been a month of starting something new. Something that’s never been tried before. I feel like I’ve been pushing myself in a new direction, striving for a new graduation.
In September I am going to ride a century which I’ve been training for the last three months. I rode 300 miles in the month of July. My side company, Afterhours Development, has a pretty large project going on at the end of the year and we’re developing some more neat local resource sites.
And I can’t leave out Mrs. Shoo! She was just accepted into her graduate program at ISU and will be starting classes this fall while still teaching full time. She works ten times harder than me, I don’t know how she does it.
Even though I’ll feel those August butterflies it’s exciting to think of what’s coming next. Who am I going to meet? What new challenges lie ahead?
Here’s to August!
Still can’t believe my parents got a dog. I lived with them for over 24 years and never once did I think it was possible that my family would have an animal other than a fish or guinea pig. We went through four guinea pigs.
Well, all is said and done. My parents now have a new little one to watch over. Her name is Belle, she’s 2 years old (looks much younger than Buddy), and was adopted from a shelter. (Note to any of you looking for a good animal)
She’s a great dog. She came over and played with Buddy and Clancy this weekend. Didn’t take them long from them to sniff each other’s “parts” and become good friends.
I haven’t heard her speak other than when my parents came to pick her up and she howled with excitement.
Parents couldn’t have gotten luckier on finding a great dog.
It looks like spfldbloggers.com was replaced by a GoDaddy parked page earlier today. I forgot to renew the domain. Can’t believe spfldbloggers.com is already two years old. Gotshoo just passed the 4 year mark.
While I’m ranting on spfldbloggers, I am still working on some improvements for the site. Specifically the oddball characters that end up the descriptions. The site currently uses a PHP library called Magpie to fetch and decipher the rss / atom data, but the other day I can across another library called SimplePie which looks to be a 100x better and handle more atom feeds which it currently fails miserably at.
In non-geek terms, “Cool stuff.”
I’ve also found some fixes for the Humzoo feeds as they don’t currently grab the description data.
You probably didn’t even notice, but gotshoo got moved to a new server tonight. Had to consolidate accounts. I told ’shoofan’ aka Berry that I was moving Gotshoo? and he about freaked out thinking the internet was going to shutdown.I told him not to worry as Rick Astley would calm his fears.
Still got to fix a few things, but let me know if you find anything that’s broke.
After years of a dogless childhood, my parents, more specifically my mom, got a dog today.
Her name is Belle and she’s a dachshund / basset mix. Just like Buddy but black and longer ears. I think my dad was going to blog about her, but I had to take down his blog and move it too (ed.gotshoo.com). He’s got more photos posted on Flickr.
My parents brought her over today and both Buddy & Clancy approve that she’s a great dog and my parents are having the empty nest syndrome.
You can now peer into the neighborhoods of Springfield, IL. Creepy, but cool.
Looks like the photos were taken last year. My former roommate’s car is outside of my house, that’s how I can tell.
Nod to 411 Mommy for the heads up.
After walking 26 miles to Grant Park, back to stash my camera, back to Grant Park, and again across Grant Park many times, my body was abused with a physical regiment that it hadn’t seen in years. But we were all about the music, so there was no rest for the wicked or those that stayed out till 2am.
We started the daily out oddly enough with Dierks Bentley, a country band. Although not the usual music on my iPod, I could see myself getting into it. He had a great crowd presence. Well, at least with the ladies. His songs were catchy and about the usual country subjects: drinking and lovin’.
Next we found ourselves in a sea of dancing techno fools (video to follow) for Booka Shade. Booka was a dual group composed of an electronic drummer and a keyboard/loops MC from Germany. I still haven’t been able to figure it out, but crowds can really get into techno. Ohh- he just stopped the drum beat and crescendo into a new track, we must cheer! But hey, I can get into too. All of us guys strutted out some dance moves. Vintage stuff too from the 90s.
While we were totally checking out Booka Shade, we missed out on MGMT which Ed called Management all weekend. I forgave him. Excuse me, I was wrong. According to Wikipedia, the band was formerly known as The Management.
Then there was a void in the space time continuum. I lost the guys somehow and end up wondering around by myself for the next couple of hours. Cell phones don’t exactly work in a sea of 75K other people.
When we did meet up again it was time for Rage Against the Machine. Wilco was the other headlining act on the other side of the park, but they tour all the time and I owe Rage some piece of my teenage years. Rage was insane with the music being stopped a couple of times because of people getting hurt near the stage. During the breaks, we did get to hear de la Rocha spout some political nonsense rhetoric, but as Josh pointed out, they’re named Rage Against the Machine - you should know what to expect.
I guess you know when you’re getting old when your birthday consists of watching guys install a new breaker box, giving the neighbor kids pushes on swings, and going out to dinner with the family.
I am not complaining; I had a wonderful day. Just observing.
First off - Some observations:
- I feel left out of the body modification crowd. I have no tattoos, piercings, or wild and crazy hair except for morning bed head.
- $2 for a bottle of water isn’t a bad price.
- My teenage angst years are long gone. I no longer fear the man; I am the man.
- The 80’s are alive again. I mean it. Huge sunglasses, neon colors, running shorts.
- Music still speaks to me.
I drove up late Thursday night leaving Mrs. Shoo with her girlfriend while I headed to Lollapalooza with the guys. As if that was a wise decision, we’ll leave that for another blog post. We both had a great time - even though she encountered the deadly smell of a skunk and had a slight injury with some stairs - and I acted like I was 21 again and watched (note: watched, not par-taked) the guys get turn down by several girls. They eventually scored some numbers.
Three days of concert going, walking the Chicago streets, and trying to keep up with the guys can leave one Shoo tired, so I’ll do my best with the abridged version of my recap.
How about some rockin?
Day 1 -
Friday we didn’t get there till the middle of the afternoon because A. We took the bus, B. They wouldn’t allow my digital SLR in. Even though last year I didn’t have a problem at all. So I had to walk with my buddy Josh to his office which over a mile away (so it seemed) to stash it. In hindsight, if I just put it in my cargo pocket they wouldn’t have even noticed.
The first band we encountered was the Go! Team. The Go! Team was an energetic bunch from England with two drum sets and an eclectic bunch of instruments. All six of them played multiple instruments banging out indie rock tunes with hiphop lyrics. They were a great start and had the crowd going in the blistering heat.
On the way to Gogol Bordello, we stopped and listened to Louis XIV. Another bunch of chaps from England. They were all wearing suits and looked incredibly hot. They would have been a good band to see at an concert hall and not a outdoor festival.
Gogol Bordello. First of all, I picked up their super energetic album back in January last year, so I new what to expect. The concert was like polka on steroids. The band was super energetic, the crowd was into it. It didn’t matter that beer was $5 per cup, we were going to dance. Definitely one of the hi-lights from this year.
Afterwards we jetted back across Grant Park to see Jack White and The Raconteurs. Musically these guys are incredible, but again, another band that would have been better suited for a concert hall and not an outdoor festival.
For the first time, Lollapalooza was sold out this year because of the headlining band on Friday: Radiohead. I’d call myself an avid Radiohead listener. I have the majority of their albums and didn’t get into them till Kid A, but I was disappointed in the concert. Maybe I was spoiled last year with the spetacular light display from Daft Punk or the range of musical talent from Muse, but Radiohead didn’t do it for me.
I hate saying it, and I really didn’t want to believe it but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe I needed a mind altering experience, but the feeling wasn’t there.
Probably a case of expecting too much when I would have been better not knowing anything.
Day 2 and 3 coming. Comment if you’ve seen any of the other bands.
Latest Comments
RSS