Thursday, August 7, 2008

clouds roll by; or, the crazy accordian man

kristine finally (!!!) put her pictures of boston online; she said i could link to them, so here they are.

this picture

makes me think of the crazy accordian man we met while we were sitting outside the T station in cambridge on a sunday night. we had ended up in a discussion about music, and being the person that i am who constantly is trying to convert kristine to a pearl jam nut like myself, i'm sure they were the subject of our conversation, which somehow drifted to bugs , the PJ song that ed plays on accordian. i think that i was first telling her that i read that at one of ed's solo shows someone yelled a request for vitalogy, and ed said something like, "ok, but i need 45 minutes and an accordian." (i have absolutely no idea if that really happened, but i think that it's funny).

i think that it was at this point that the elderly gentleman sitting beside us spoke up. (maybe accordian piqued his curiousity). he became very animated, telling us emphatically that american music is "no good," because it doesn't have any soul (hardly a new idea, and one that, with a few exceptions, i am hard-pressed to argue with). what i liked (and feared, a little) about this man was his passion in trying to win us over to his point of view. kristine asked him where he was from; i forget exactly where - somewhere in eastern europe, i think. he kind of reminded me of my grandfather; he was this very curmudgeonly old man who liked to argue more than anything, i think. he told us we should listen to indian music. i gathered that he didn't like the sound of guitars, and preferred pianos (or accordians i guess. maybe even ukeleles? i should have told him to check out pearl jam). "american music bad."

kristine also has some pictures of the scariest ever holiday inn in mansfield. in a vacation where i found some great deals on priceline, this was by far the most expensive hotel (i use that term loosely) we stayed at. first, we arrived around 4:30 and all i wanted to do was take a shower before the concert, but our room didn't have any toilet paper. that's kind of a necessity no matter who you are. so i called the front desk, and 20 minutes later a maid brought us one (!!) roll. we also happened to be in a wing of the hotel that was i guess under construction -there was plaster falling from the ceiling, and when we finally got back to the room after the show, kristine decided she had to take pictures of the crumbling walls and a random styrofoam cup tied to the ceiling. (it was funny at the time).

we got back after the PJ concert around 1 AM, and i hear kristine say, "uh, megan, there's blood on my sheets." "come again?" "THERE'S BLOOD ON MY SHEETS." we probably should have called the front desk, but didn't, and poor kristine had to sleep on top of the blanket. sorry about that....

i think that my favorite memory of that trip (not counting pearl jam) was the restaraunt we ate at on newbury street. i think it was called joe's diner. i remember that we argued about going there, but i'm sorry, when my watch says it's time for a meal, i need to eat (it's a personality defect, i guess. i blame my parents). again, i don't recall how this joke exactly started, but kristine and i started saying that if she ever ordered a drink in a restaraunt, she would ask for a "pint of whiskey." i told her that i didn't think that would taste very good, and we started laughing and somehow the waiter (who, as an aside, was sort of cute) overheard us and i told him that kristine wanted one (a pint, that is) to give to a small child. crap... i totally messed up the joke, but trust me that it was funny, and thinking about that dinner is making me crack up again.

since i haven't posted about my love glen hansard in a while, here is some goodness from a swell season show the other day in the czech republic.

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