Jenny, I've got your number

This past weekend, my friend Mike made a comment about my blog to which his brother Adam said something along the lines of "You have a blog? Ugh. I'm against blogs." His reasoning had something to do with sharing information that could be potentially viewed by anyone and everyone. It brings up an interesting point, of course - what and how much to share about oneself online. I also started a MySpace page a few months back because some of my friends were doing it (ahem, Adam included, but he reasoned that he doesn't blog on it, which is true), and when it came up the last time I was home my parents gave a fleeting look like "Oooh, MySpace? Where stalkers prey on innocent young kids and stuff like that?"

The point is you just have to take care with what you post. I'm not on here to say "for a good time call 867-5309." This is just my way of sharing a few thoughts for my friends to read. I don't particularly like to talk on the phone - I don't generally have a lot to say, so I don't often call people just to chat, because then it just gets awkward after 5 minutes, and nobody enjoys that. And when I have a completely random thought, it certainly isn't worthy of calling someone up to say "Hmm, do you ever think about what word you've said the most over the course of your life?" but if I post it and you read it, you might get a little humor value out of it. I can keep my close friends up to date with some of my thoughts and things going on in my life that I may not spend a lot of time discussing otherwise.

For the record, the 40% post rate about Elton John will not continue. Just special circumstances coinciding with the beginning of my blog.

I have also re-enabled the ability to post comments, if you wish. I didn't think it would get much use anyways, but apparently Alex has something to say. It probably isn't very interesting, but let's throw her a bone and keep her happy.

I've come to the conclusion that 2 liter bottles of soda are only useful for larger gatherings of people (greater than 3). Party, sports get together, that kind of thing. It isn't humanly possible for one or two people to drink the bottle of soda before it goes flat. Realistically, it has to be consumed in one sitting for maximum taste effectiveness. Absolute max of two days and a few openings, and then it's done. I usually stay away from these, but the store suckered me in with a sale and I had to dump the left over. Never again.

Guiness Book of World Record watch: I got pulled over THREE times in one hour-long trip from Poughkeepsie to Greenwood Lake for a busted headlight. Once at the 87 Exit 18 entrance toll booth, once halfway down 87 to the Harriman exit, once in Monroe. No tickets, luckily, they were all nice and understanding. Almost shocking to get both all three times considering the sample size. The lesson, as always: cops in rural NY have nothing better to do, so if you have anything wrong with your car or you are going too fast, there is approximately a 100% chance you are going to get pulled over. I learned this lesson at Colgate. It's unbelievable.

Until next time...

Hold me closer, Tiny Dancer

Last night was my third time seeing Elton John in concert. The first was the venue formerly known as Great Woods in... Mansfield?... MA in '95ish with my family, the second in Albany (with Billy Joel) at the Pepsi Center (where he had to tape up his Diet Coke) in 2003 with Mike and Alita, and this '06 edition was at Nassau Coliseum in NY (where the Islanders play hockey) with Mike, Kristin and our invisible friend.

We didn't exactly have front row seats, but that doesn't really matter too much at a concert because you go for the music anyways, right? Elton, at 58, doesn't really venture beyond the confines of his piano these days anyways, other than to wave and salute the crowd between songs. Actually, the funny thing is that the only other time I went to this venue (With Mike, Jeff and Jen for a Devils/Islanders game) we were in the very back row against the wall of the uppermost level. When we arrived last night, we took bets on how close row O was to the back wall - it was 4 rows from the top, which was pretty exciting until we realized they didn't sell the top three rows because the veiw was too obstructed.

As for the concert itself, it was - of course - an enjoyable evening. I don't want you to think I have any negative thoughts about going, because I don't, but I'm afraid I would have to rank it third out of the three times I've seen Sir Elton. It's simply a function of age and eroding skills (voice, certainly not piano) and energy, really, but that being said it was still a good concert. EJ played for a little over two hours straight, 23 songs according to Mike's current list, unless we uncover any more that he forgot. For the most part, he played a lot of his old hits, songs that everyone knows. Mike and I both would love for him to play some slightly more random songs since we know a little more about his entire body of work than the most average of fans, but that's hard to expect of him or any group putting on a concert, obviously. Surprisingly, he only played three songs off of his new CD, and five post 1995 songs. Personally, I like hearing his newer songs in concert because his voice just can't pull off some of the older songs anymore, whereas the newer songs are (obviously) tailored to his current vocal range. Case in point: Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. The Funeral for a Friend instrumental sounds fantastic in concert, but unfortunately he just can't pull off Love Lies Bleeding that great anymore.

The one little golden nugget out of the entire concert that I enjoyed was when he played "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" - a song off of Honky Chateau from the early 70's. Relatively speaking, this was our random song of the night, because if I had to guess most of you probably don't know that song. If I said "Crocodile Rock" or "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" you would know what I was talking about. Anyways, this is one of my favorite songs from that time period, for one it is not played into the ground like the other hits and it is also just a wonderful song. As a bonus, this is one of those songs that still fits perfectly in Elton's range, so it sounded really good. I was very pleasantly surprised. Other highlights included "Take me to the Pilot" because he started it off with a neat instrumental (he's still an amazing piano player, I will say that much), and "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" - one of my favorites from the late 70's that sounded surprisingly good without him going off and hitting all the high notes.

Two other completely random notes associated with the night:
1) He didn't play an encore. How weird is that? He played "Your Song" and then walked off, and we were sitting there contemplating what he was going to finish up with --- and then the lights came on. I was completely unprepared for the concert to be over. It's the equivalent of a football team making a late game push to tie the score and taking an offensive penalty with less than ten seconds left, which by rule runs off the rest of the clock and all of a sudden your team doesn't have one last gasp play. It took me a few moments to recover.

2) Scalpers at a concert? I guess it makes sense... it's an event, there are tickets. But it just struck me as odd. I get sporting events, but something like an Elton John concert seems like something you would go to with a ticket already in hand, not just show up at and say "I hope someone is scalping tickets to this event." Anyways, Mike got half price on an extra ticket, so he didn't have to completely eat it. I don't think it got sold though, because no random dude showed up to replace the imaginary friend. Guess that guy should stick to Islanders games. Oh wait, they play hockey, which means there's very little chance the game is sold out to begin with. Silly me.

All in all, a good concert!