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.

i'll be in my own dance

i had an AMAZING time in boston. it's good to be home, and sad to be home at the same time. i'm happy to be back in my routine of daily life (i went grocery shopping this afternoon; although tomorrow when i go back to work, i may be singing a different tune). pearl jam was, of course, incredible (and that's an understatement). i have purposefully not read any reviews of their shows, because i don't want them to cloud my own memories. one thing that i learned is that i will never be a rock photographer - by and large, my pictures of the concert turned out horribly, but that's okay, it was still fun taking them. honestly, i was so happy with my seat (until a few weeks ago, i thought i would be sitting in the very last row of the last section) that i had to force myself to put away my camera so that i could enjoy the show.

i think there are very few things in the world that can make me feel the way a pearl jam concert makes me feel; i don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing. does that make sense? i am completely in the moment, singing along with the crowd, not caring what other people think of me because they are all doing the same thing.

i took some paper and a pen with me to write down notes during the show, but my plans for doing that never seem to work out. i didn't go to saturday's show, but i used the hotel's business center to check the setlist sunday morning, and a little bit of me died when i saw that they opened with hard to imagine. why couldn't they have saved that for one more day? but, i swear, as soon as i heard the opening notes of wash last monday, i was in another world. and for some reason, songs that i've listened to a hundred times seemed to take one new lives - the lyrics for education, for example, seemed to hit home in an unexpected way. and when jeff and ed played bee girl, i think i might have even started to cry. i'm not sure why - it's not a great song, or anything - but there was just something about that song at that moment that seemed right.

i'll write a more complete review tomorrow when i'm - hopefully - more awake than i am right now. now, here are some of my admittedly not-so-good pictures. i took the most pictures during the pearl jam show and our tour of fenway park. i think that i may have an obsessive personality - if it's not a band, a movie, or an actor, it's a baseball team. perhaps there are worse things to be in the world than a fan.

our restarant in cambridge. i liked the name; can you tell why?

rockin in the free world
the rest of my pictures are here.

what's your part? who you are

pearl jam's tour started tonight in west palm beach, florida. one of the most exciting parts of their tours (besides eagerly awaiting my turn to see them :) is reading setlists and guessing what they will play/ wishing i could have been there to hear a song that i love/ being excited when they start playing songs they haven't played in awhile, and hoping that they will do more of that. apparently tonight, they played who you are, which really makes me happy because.. well, watch this video from 1996:




who you are is from 1996's no code, an album that, everytime i listen to it, reminds me of sitting on the floor of my bedroom in bangor, singing along (but hopefully not so loudly that my parents could hear.. although i probably didn't succeed at that). there is just something about this song.. even though the lyrics are kind of random ("that's the moss in the aforementioned verse"?), when i hear ed sing "what's your part?/who you are/you are who/who you are," it kind of makes my heart swell (especially the way he sings it in this video). there is a part of me that will always be the 16 year old i was when i first heard this song, who has no idea what she is doing or where she is going, and to me, this song is kind of saying that it's okay to feel that way, but the things you do do matter. everyone has a part in this world. i also think that this song is about making the most of your life - something that makes much more sense to me the older i get (and the crazier the world becomes). "take me for a ride before we leave..."

or.. maybe i read wayyyy too much into ed's lyrics. i'd really like to hear how this song sounded tonight.

i can't wait until boston now! as if i weren't excited enough...

good food, or why i love farmers markets

argh. it feels like january, not june. i don't think it got out of the 50s all week! annoying.

3 weeks from tonight, i will be in boston seeing pearl jam. yay! i hope it's warmer there. i am excited to eat a lobster roll for the first time in 6 years, drink coffee from dunkin donuts and, of course, see my favorite band!

this afternoon, i went to see good food, a documentary about washington state organic, family-run farms. it was really interesting, not the least because i got a kick out of seeing some of the farmers i buy food from every saturday at the farmer's market on the big screen. going to the farmer's market is actually one of my favorite parts of the week - i only miss a saturday if i am out of town - there is nothing like a carrot that has just been picked and bought with its tops still on it. in fact, i don't buy fruits and veggies, with the exception of oranges and maybe one or two other things once in awhile, at the grocery store anymore. thanks to the farmer's markets, i've also started eating things i never would have tried otherwise. all winter long (the university district market runs all year round! yay!), i had a few steamed brussels sprouts almost every night. for the past two weeks, i've been eating spinach, something that i haven't bought at the store since the outbreak of e-coli a few years ago. my new favorite vegetable, asparagus, i never ate until i started getting it during the few weeks it is fresh in the spring (there is nothing better than steamed, in-season asparagus).

after the film, the filmmakers and a few of the featured farmer's did a little q&a session, and the one thing that stood out to me is when one of the farmer's said that, once you take into account the sustainability of the soil, small-scale, organic farming actually allows them to grow more than conventional farming would.

if you're interested in this, i also recommend the book animal, vegetable, mineral by barbara kingsolver. a couple of years ago, she and her family decided to move to a her husband's family farm in virginia and spend a year (i'm not sure if they are still living this way; i suspect they may be) growing all their own food. it's a really, really fascinating book, and what got me interested in buying food at farmer's markets in the first place.

did you fall on your way?

so i thought i might make a post about something else i'm obsessed with: the red sox. when i was a kid, my dad and i used to take a trip once a summer to fenway park to see a game. if you've never been to fenway park, it's magical (see fever pitch, the movie based partly on the book by the brilliantly hilarious nick hornby). so anyway, last year when the red sox won the world series, i was really happy. and i found this website around that time - http://www.outincenterfield.com - and now, with spring training about to begin, i decided to have a look at it again. even if you don't like the red sox, i think that the way she writes is quite entertaining. plus, she posts lots of pictures, and baseball players are not bad looking. i am sure that part of my love for the red sox is borne out of a fascination with boston. if i ever were to move from seattle, i think it would be to boston. it's a great city. plus, boston accents crack me up. as a matter of fact, i hope that pearl jam or the frames play in boston, so that i can justify a trip there this summer. haha

i am so tired - the week has felt like a month. i don't know why, but it has. maybe that's why i totally did not get lost tonight. what is going on??! i liked that it focused on desmond, but he spent too much of the episode in short hair. past desmond is not nearly as cute as future desmond. against my better judgement, i closed my eyes and ended up falling asleep and missed a little bit - what was going on with the auction? so penny's father bought some mysterious journal from the black rock ship? hmmm... so some people are able to time travel, but there are "side effects" ? i love that. i have to think about it some more..

i have my hotel reservation booked for vancouver, my plane reservations for san francisco in april.. i am so excited! eddie vedder, plus 2 swell season shows coming up! march is going to be very long.. plus, right after i get back from vancouver, my parents and i are going to go to memphis. i've always wanted to go to graceland.