From The Back Row

I was trying to come up with a different take on year-end recaps. Live music, sure that’s a given. My Year on Twitter, that’s a little more timely. My last list will be a few of the domain names I registered in 2010. At press time, I have 51 domain names, however 3 are set to expire this month and I won’t be renewing them. Anyways, here is the 2010 sampler:

3dsportstvproduction.com
shoppingcartmayhem.com
tacticalsandals.com
muppetpimp.com
rocketschedules.com
(and one more for 2011, just registered today… audaciouslylazy.com)

Sports. Sports TV. Politics. Entertainment. Some good, some bad. Some insightful, some truly lame.

As I look back on my calendar for 2010, I’d like to review and mention a few good shows I had the chance to attend. What set 2010 apart from most years is that I didn’t attend my first show until June. Not sure what happened (or didn’t happen) in the first five months, but apparently it wasn’t enough to get me out.

June 24, 2010: Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves (The Roxy)
Love Eli Reed and although The Roxy seemed less-than-sold-out, I had a good time. Europe loves these guys and this style of music and they end up playing a ton of dates there. They don’t get out west much and I was glad to make time for them on this date.

August 13, 2010: Rush (Verizon Irvine)
When do 6th row pit tickets seem like 2nd row pit tickets? When the 6th row curves from one side of a semi-circle pit to the other and you’re on one end. That combined with a new camera that basically I bought just for taking to concerts (after years of having substandard concert cameras), basically meant that I played photog for much of the night. I got some great shots, period, end of story. Show was awesome as well, but that’s one thing you can count on from Rush – a great show.

August 23, 2010: Dave Matthews Band (Hollywood Bowl)
I had been to the Hollywood Bowl a couple times before (in the benches for Mel Tormé & garden box for Ben Harper/Jack Johnson). Never before had I been to the elitespace known as “Pool Circle”. Pretty sure I can never go back. Basically you’re 1st through 7th row, compressed into a small space and everyone in the Circle has the best seat in the house. Either you’re on a riser or the rest of the patrons behind you in garden boxes are sunken down. The only way I can describe it is you know when you’re watching the Grammy’s or another music awards show and there are those people way down at the edge of the stage and you’re like “how did they get those seats??!??” That’s basically Pool Circle in a nutshell. DMB was awesome, but the seats made it for me.

August 25 & 28, 2010: Dave Matthews Band (Concord & Shoreline)
I had never been to Sleep Train Amphitheatre at Concord or Shoreline Amphitheatre presented by the über-fascist City of Mountain View. Both had their pluses and minuses. DMB was solid each night.

September 16, 2010: Primus (Club Nokia)
So I got Primus tickets because they’re on my list of “bands I just never got the chance to see”. Not until just a few days before the show did I find out they’d just be playing the entire ‘Frizzle Fry’ record as their show for the night. Not a bad surprise and it was great to see a solid act.

December 13, 2010: Roger Waters: The Wall (Honda Center)
I never really planned on seeing Roger Waters, but some great seats literally landed in front of me and I couldn’t turn them down. Now the big rumor was that David Gilmour would join RW for one song on the US tour. This night at Honda Center was the 2nd to last night of the US tour and DG hadn’t appeared (he never did). While ‘The Wall’ is one of those seminal albums, I can’t say I listen to it often because it’s also one of those records where literally every track is a hit. Once you’ve played it 1,000 times, lived the songs and gotten used to them being played for the better part of your life, it just doesn’t occur to you bring it out very often. That said, I feel that unless I get the chance to see Waters, Gilmour & Mason play together “one last time”, I find my Pink Floyd concert circle complete. I saw “Pink Floyd” with Gilmour, Mason and Rick Wright. I saw Roger Waters.

Hopefully I can remember to do more than one of these as 2010 closes, but really, who knows.

Amongst my many online sources of expression, this may be the place that gets only an annual update. It’s September, 2010 and I semi-actively maintain this blog and another thebigjohnexperience.com. I have a couple other sites, mostly for vanity use that people either know or don’t know I own, at my discretion. They aren’t secrets, I just don’t tell everyone they all exist or that I run them. That’s fine though, the internet is a faceless place for the most part and that’s alright too. You see, that is what makes the internet a great place – it can be anything you want it to be. I just told someone yesterday that the level in which he shares his world with others is completely inconsequential to me. There are some folks I’ve met along the way who have absolutely no internet presence whatsoever. You Google their names and nothing appears. That will never be the case for me and I’ve accepted it. For the most part I have no regrets about my activities online, even the ones dating back to before the web (http) even existed. I may post here again tomorrow or I may never post here again. Like I said, it’s what I want it to be.

After last year’s epic road trip (14 days, over 4000 miles, 2 countries), I decided to play it cool this year and take it easy. I’ll escape soon after my exam on Friday, spend 2 nights in Atlanta (one of which seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd with Kid Rock), move along to Memphis and Graceland (and Corky’s). After that it’s Oklahoma City and Albuquerque. The final day is really more of a test than anything else, a 774-mile run from ABQ to Arcadia – just to see if I can do it.
Should be an interesting trip as it is probably the last of it’s kind for awhile.

Day 1 – Tucson
Late start leaving the Arc, didn’t actually pull out until just before 2pm. My punishment was one last dose of LA traffic (210 east, 71 south, 91 east). An hour later I was on 15 and headed for the border. Took the 15/8 route this time since the last time I went through PHX to Tucson I spent an extra hour and a half in traffic. Drive was good, scenic – plenty of rocks. Made a stop at the Golden Acorn Casino for gas. Didn’t really make a lunch stop per se, got into the Marriott here around 11pm and got a salad from rm svc. No pictures as my iPhoto just finished getting updated. Playlist for Day 1 is a little tragic – podcasts included MacBreak Weekly and GDGT, music ran the gamut – Buffett, Marley, Winger, Journey, NWA, Smash Mouth, Eli Young Band, Don Henley. I know, ouch.

Day 2 – Fort Stockton
Day 3 – Austin
Day 4 – New Orleans
Day 5 – Jacksonville
Day 6 – Fort Lauderdale

Ok, so it’s been awhile since I’ve posted to my personal blog. There are many reasons, but the basic one is that I’ve been “participating” more on “The Facebook” lately. Also, I do use Twitter fairly regularly (and have been for 2+ years now), but since that is shown in this blog’s sidebar, I guess it counts as updating this site. Also, I haven’t been using Flickr much – that could change as well. Basically I’m becoming more of a mobile blogger which is basically Twitter (which updates my FB status). After it updates FB, my non-Twitter crowd can comment on that status and discussions form, etc.

Since I’m wrapping up school in the next few fortnights, I’ll come back to this, my personal blog more. I have plans to start at least one more blog which I’ll update regularly (at least daily to start). The plans are for a “lifestyle blog” covering topics that interest me and that I think will interest a lot of people. I’ll probably develop it while I’m in Miami and the best I can hope for is maybe a September 1st launch. More details to come on that down the road…

The roadie is in-place, leaving Friday and hitting up Tucson, Fort Stockton, Austin, New Orleans, Jacksonville & Fort Lauderdale. Graduation is next Friday, May 15th – you’re all invited – see you at the BUC!

Matt & I get the road trip thing

The last edition of “Gotta Get One” was in November 2007. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten lots of things since then. The point of GGO is that when you have a seemingly unending source of cash, lottery-money if you will, this is a good place to start when you’re saying to yourself, “What do you get for someone that has everything?”

The answer… Paintball Turret! That’s right, this thing puts out paintballs at an astounding 34 balls per second. Per second! It can be remote-controlled and there’s a camera on it for remote viewing as well. Assuming the statute of limitations has been reached, I could say there was a time when mounting one of these to the roof of your SinBin would’ve meant utter destruction for all that lay in your path. Alas, that was a time when only Bosley on ‘Charlie’s Angels’ had a cel phone. Times have changed and you can be sure that the next iteration of the UAV will have one of these firmly mounted on top.

Ok, so I’ve been remiss as of late to update the blog which I know everyone checks on a daily basis. I will be posting more now that my schedule has loosened up and I have some interesting tidbits to share as we head into ’09. Reviewing my personal and work calendar, here are some highlights from the last couple months:

In October, hockey got underway and I started another season of Ducks. High school football was also in full swing, so October was a busy month. In a rare turn, I had a chance to travel for a game to Oakland, one of California’s many garden spots.

November was also very busy, thankfully, with much more football and hockey, mixing in some NBA and volleyball. In the early part of the month, I went to DV Expo and got myself a video camera, the first I’ve ever owned (I know, shocking).

December brought more football and hockey, culminating with the State Bowl Games last week (presented by Farmers). I was able to finally shoot the main segment of my senior video project (due May 1st) which was nice, 6 cameras in a tv truck during a Ducks game – more than we had for the telecast itself. Things are winding down now and the sparseness of work in January and February will hopefully lead to more hanging out and other interesting things. I always have a few irons in the fire, so maybe I’ll finally get a chance to work on some different projects. March is looking extremely busy and before you know it baseball will be back and I’ll be traveling back to Miami for my final appearance in organized education. Stay tuned for those updates as well as my year-end reviews, keeping the folks updated on where I was physically and mentally in 2008.