The Outlaw Torn

PJ PJ PJ!!

2008-07-19T22:47:00.003-04:00

went to not one but two Pearl Jam concerts over the span of one weekend.. not the craziest thing we've ever done but definitely one of the most fun ones!

this wasn't the first time i'd watched PJ live.. and that previous time i'd said that was one of the best shows i'd been to. well, the first show on the 28th was the best concert i've ever been at. great seats, great weather, great company, great band, great set, great show.. what else can i say?! we'd gone early, tailgated and barbecued for a few hours.. it's been a while since we'd last done that for a show. it was a hot sweltering night and if the rain that the flashes of lightning portended had actually poured down during the show, then PJ's cover of The Who's classic "Love Reign O'er Me" would have been fulfilled..

June 28th, 2008 - Mansfield, MA
Pre-Opener:
Throw Your Arms Around Me
Set 1:
Hard To Imagine, Why Go, Hail Hail, Comatose, Low Light, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Corduroy, Faithfull, Off He Goes, Given To Fly, Down, I'm Open, I Got Id, Even Flow, Do The Evolution, Once, Rearviewmirror
Encore 1:
Love Reign O'er Me, Come Back, Insignificance, Black, Better Man (Save it for Later)
Encore 2:
No More, State Of Love And Trust, Alive

the second show was on a Monday, so between the pain of getting out of work and making that damned commute all the way down to Mansfield and being at a show where it seemed the entire cast of High School Musical had accidentally landed up at.. the show wasn't as awesome as the previous one. i wasn't too sure of the set list either, but the band still sounded great so it was all good

June 30th, 2008 - Mansfield, MA
Set 1:
Wash, Last Exit, Save You, Severed Hand, Animal, MFC, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, 1/2 Full, Corduroy, Given To Fly, Even Flow, Education, Satan's Bed, Whipping, Glorified G, Do The Evolution
Encore 1:
Bee Girl, Who You Are, Better Man (Save it for Later), Garden, Why Go
Encore 2:
No More, Once, Footsteps, Alive, Rockin' In The Free World

links to pictures here

playing ketch-up

2008-07-18T22:46:00.003-04:00

i know i haven't written in ages, basically i have a bunch of incomplete posts saved as drafts only cos things have been hectic and i haven't had a chance to finish them. lots to talk about though.. two Pearl Jam concerts, structural changes at work, the annual trip to New Orleans.. see you back here soonish!!

4 years and 776 posts..

2008-06-25T21:45:00.006-04:00

missed this blog's fourth anniversary a couple of weeks ago.. much has changed, and yet not much has changed. good times still abound, while growing up has happened alongside. i still don't believe i wake up and go to work six days a week, considering the rockstar lifestyle we led back in college. oh well, life goes on. this blog goes on too.

6 6 6.. still the number of the beast

2008-06-21T08:52:00.006-04:00

got to watch Iron Maiden again last night.. they haven't changed since the last time a couple of years ago, which is definitely a good thing. Maiden always put on an excellent live act, and prefer to play open arenas.. mostly because of the pyrotechnics and the huge robotic mummy-like Eddie that skulks about on stage while Maiden are shredding.. while we tailgated, it was awesome to see a lot of younger generation fans as well, considering Maiden have been around since the late 70's!

at times the sound got crappy, and the intermittent rain got heavy, but Maiden were not to be dissuaded on the last stop of their 2008 'Somewhere Back In Time' World Tour.. opening with Winston Churchill's momentous speech leading into "Aces High", playing the full thirteen minutes of the epic "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner", the extended howling in the classic "Run To The Hills", the frenzied triple-threat guitar attack of "The Trooper" and many many more

now no ode to Maiden is ever complete without a few special mentions - Steve Harris' driving bass, Nicko McBrain going wild on the drums with the Pharaoh leering over his shoulder, Maiden's famed triple-threat guitar attack (which i repeat only cos of the sheer intensity with which it hits you!) and finally lead singer (and accomplished pilot) Bruce Dickinson's amazing vocal abilities.. up with the Irons!!

here's some links if you want to catch more action from the show:
reviews - Boston Globe; Boston Herald.
videos - Asttha; mdilios; HowellKenny; skippah99.

this is living

2008-06-14T06:50:00.003-04:00

it's two years to the day that the gf and i met and she moved in. forget the cliches of 'time flying by' and 'two hearts beating as one' yada yada yada. if only it were that remotely easy, or simple.

two people living together as a couple is different. different from what? it's just different. as an only kid, the concepts of time and space were very well defined for me. it was very easy to just phase out and be in my own world for long parts of the day and night. it's no wonder growing up i talked to myself all the time. i still have long, relevant and pertinent discussions with my mind - very refreshing i find them.

still, having enjoyed this phase for the last two years of cohabitation/living-in-sin/whatever you wanna call it, i wouldn't have it any other way..

it's like living with your best buds, but better. all the fun of great conversation and crazy partying, with the added bonus of a quick romp or three in any room of the apartment, and no one's the wiser.. heh!

it's like living at home with your folks, but better. you actually eat square meals on proper plates, wear clothes that get more than annually laundered and live in a house that doesn't require you turning it upside down every time you can't find your favorite Metallica tshirt.

it's like living alone at your own place, but better. romantic dinners for two; cosying up on the couch for a funny movie; getting blazed and making out; sharing a great bottle of wine; smart conversation not involving politics, Playmates and getting plastered; going to concerts together; cooking new stuff out of a recipe book; going shopping for potted plants for the living room windowsill; putting away yet another shitload of groceries; not having to watch Sabres' games alone; actually discovering new music by listening to what she listens to; laughing together hysterically at 'Family Guy' reruns..

this is a long incomplete list, but an awesome one nevertheless.. happy anniversary babe!!

grunge is still around

2008-05-22T07:32:00.000-04:00

"Nirvana may have been the band that put an entire generation in flannel, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both sold a lot more records, but Mudhoney was truly the band who made the '90s grunge rock movement possible."

yeah, that's who Mudhoney are. The core of Mudhoney came from two legendary bands that defined the grunge sound as we came to know it later - Green River & The Melvins. If you don't listen to grunge then this might as well be a HTTP 404 - Page Not Found for you.

amazingly enough, i have always found wiki to be an excellent reference for music and entertainment in general. i guess the sheer numbers of people who contribute helps regulate bigoted and self-righteous lack of objectivity that sorely afflicts youtube and other popular media forms.

we caught Mudhoney on tour in a small club somewhere in Cambridge, which is exactly how a grunge act should be watched. what really got us was that they have kept exactly the same grunge sound they always had, even into all their newer stuff. it was like a grunge history lesson and made for an awesome show!

there goes another manager

2008-05-15T20:32:00.000-04:00

can someone say deja vu all over again.. at least this current boss of mine lasted into the summer, the previous one didn't even make it out of winter! but yes, that's the news.. my boss will be quitting soon. that just tells you how hard a man his boss is to work with! personally i have no issues with his boss, let's see how i feel after working directly for him this summer.

if you hadn't heard yet, the economy is in recession. as a direct result sales volumes are down for soda and other soft drinks, though bottled water is holding its own. this means that this summer might not be the busiest time of the year for the plant. let me take that back, all it means is that we'll probably not be running production seven days a week, but my maintenance dept. as always will be in fix and repair machines, and try to get some preventive maintenance in as well..

what i'd really like to see is if the people upstairs actually offer me his job straight up this time, instead of wasting everyone's time with trying to hire another underling manager!

rear-ended

2008-05-07T09:54:00.002-04:00

now those of you who know me well know about my profound, deep-rooted and probably quite irrational preoccupation for the hind quarters of the female of the species. there are various words that can be used to describe the derrière, not half of which begin to convey the beauty and emotion that cause a stirring within me when my eyes come to rest on a curvilicious rear end..

right. that was probably too much info.

the other day, and i don't know how exactly, i read the word 'asphyxiation' somewhere and for some reason i made the connection with the word 'ass-fixation', like millions of men must have before me. upon further contemplation i realised that there could be more middle ground between the two words, especially if you are into face-sitting, smothering, femdom and other related genres of porn.. hehe!

thanks to the wonderful world of google, i will not need to post any links for any of the things i described here.. feel free to go online and find whatever turns you on!

the nightwatchman on the justice tour

2008-04-28T19:59:00.000-04:00

once upon a time there was a band by the name of Rage Against The Machine. in that band was a guitar god by the name of Tom Morello. when RATM called it quits, the instrumental section of the band got together with one Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and formed a new band called Audioslave. soon after that our man Tom met one Serj Tankian from the band System Of A Down and the two together formed an organization known as the Axis Of Justice. meanwhile Tom started a solo act called The Nightwatchman and went on tour to raise awareness of issues facing us today.

the show itself was fantastic, with a very wide and eclectic selection of muscial genres represented. Tom Morello was of course the star of the show, and local boys State Radio (ex-Dispatch) brought guys to their feet as well. read a review here. going by this, if RATM get back together this summer then the shows are going to be doubly-awesome. tom's energy is infectious, and for a Harvard graduate he sure plays the guitar like a wildchild! also playing were Wayne Kramer of MC-5 and Boots Riley of The Coup, and special guest Gary Cherone of Extreme, with his new band Hurtsmile

here's Tom on the left jamming with the Freedom Fighter Orchestra

sexting on staycation??

2008-04-15T07:56:00.004-04:00

urban slang grows at a most profound rate, as can be seen by the sheer number of words and phrases on the Urban Dictionary..

two of my new fave words happen to be sexting and staycation.. 'sexting' refers to basically text chat via SMS/MMS, of a more explicit nature of course. a 'staycation' is a vacation where you stay around the house cos 1) gas prices are ridiculously high and 2) you need more than a week to really go somewhere, look around, imbibe the local color, tap some native ass and enjoy yourself..

sabres meet n' greet

2008-04-06T07:53:00.000-04:00

went for the last game of the season, sabres at bruins in boston. unfortunately no luxury box seats this time, pepsi hospitality only goes so far when you're merely a lower level executive. anyways, we had pretty good seats up on the balcony..

the sabres won 3-0, which was awesome, unfortunately we missed the playoffs so that was that for hockey this season. the real bonus was that i knew someone who knew someone and after the game we got to go down and meet the sabres leaving the locker rooms. we got to speak to most of the team, take pics and get autographs too! here's us with the sabres star goalie ryan miller, and with star-to-be drew stafford

If I were..

2008-04-01T17:37:00.000-04:00

.. easy, I'd blog a tag ages after I had stopped writing proper posts. So here I am.

If I were a month I would be: June, carrying the hope of spring and the promise of summer - yeah right!

If I were a day of the week I would be: Saturday night baby!

If I were a time of day I would be: 11pm, the time i'm either fast asleep or at the peak of my creativity.

If I were a planet I would be: Uranus.. lol, that was too easy. Probably Mars, like Earth, but not quite.

If I were an animal I would be: a lion.. lazy as f*ck but when things need to get done they get done.

If I were a direction I would be: going down. Yes.

If I were a liquid I would be: beer. Vatfuls of the stuff.

If I were a flower/plant I would be: barley or hops, going with the beer theme.

If I were a kind of weather I would be: sunny yet breezy, like the Northeast spring.

If I were a musical instrument I would be: a rusty trombone. UrbanDictionary that one up!

If I were an emotion I would be: empathy - i usually look out for the others of the species, but i do NOT "suffer fools gladly" (2 Corinthians 11:19)

If I were a color I would be: Pepsi blue baby, look at what i put up with and yet go back to work every day.

If I were a sound I would be: a fart! hahah!

If I were a car I would be: the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR

If I were a song I would be: Mad Season's 'Long Gone Day'

If I were a food I would be: thick-cut steak, grilled medium-rare with mashed potatoes

If I were a taste I would be: see above!

If I were a scent I would be: Old Spice underarm deo.

If I were a word I would be: awesome.

If I were a facial expression I would be: a raised eyebrow.

If I were a number I would be: 665, just a little short of the devil himself.

If I were a cartoon character I would be: Animal from The Muppet Show.

up close and Hurt

2008-03-22T19:25:00.000-04:00

you might have heard me raving about the band Hurt in the past.. so when we found out they were coming to Harper's Ferry in Boston, the gf and i jumped at the chance! late Monday night concert notwithstanding, it also happened to be St. Paddy's Day, there we were right up in the front. what i love about small club gigs is that the band hangs about the bar there, waiting for their turn to go on stage, hobnobbing with the fans, vis-à-vis with the gf and me!

it turned out to be a fantastic set, nice and loud, and up close and personal. of course we got to talk to all the band members before and after the show. of course we told them how much we loved them. of course we got pictures. heh!

great idea #29

2008-03-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

in this era of recycling and all that environment-consciousness, something i see every day really bothers me. why the heck do we waste so much wood, money and other resources on making spanking white envelopes? we're already making greetings cards, place-cards and all sorts of other paperware out of some sort of recycled paper, then why stop at envelopes?

the one place i saw recycled brown paper envelopes turned out to be a bitter disappointment because it was one of them fancy-ass handicraft places that actually charged about a buck per envelope! which brings me to my other point, about how 'the man' never makes it easy for people to recycle and actually give a hoot about the environment. so everyone has to either go an extra step to recycle plastic, cans and glass or worse, actually pay more to get what should be a government and private industry sponsored service! is that hypocritical of me to expect at least that from the big corporations?!

shuffle-o to buffalo

2008-03-14T19:03:00.000-04:00

so one day i'm browsing through the bookshelf, and suddenly i realize i cannot find any of my andy mcnab's!! now those of you who don't know me too well probably also don't know how much i love his books, and so it really bothered me to also realize that the books were still in a box back in my old apartment in buffalo! so then i got a-thinking about what the heck else i had left back there! it appeared that there was actually a good chunk of my wardrobe and books and other important documents still back at old 122H..

then i also got thinking, that it would be fantastic to go go check out the Buffalo Sabres play at home, surrounded by raving raging buffalonians rather than in the stodgy confines of boston, in enemy territory! by the miracles of ebay and travelocity, credit card info was transferred and tickets were bought, and before you could say "let's go Sabres" we were headed off to buffalo to watch the Sabres play the Capitals, with the added bonus of watching Ovechkin play - his rugged jawline makes the gf swoon, apparently..

unfortunately the Sabres lost, but the rest of the two-day whirlwind trip was fantastic, despite the snowstorms and biting cold. i retrieved all my missing stuff, had strong sensations of deja vu walking the streets of University heights, past 33H and 122H, eating at Just Pizza, dropping by the library i worked at, peering into classrooms that i rarely sat in and finally meeting up with my thesis advisor and being surprised by how warmly he welcomed me back!

one final note, these small puddle-jumpers for local direct flights make for some rough flying in bad weather, definitely not for the queasy ones!

push my buttons?

2008-03-09T10:15:00.003-04:00

Blog buttons are a fascinating thing to play with, especially if you have lots of time and a handy website for a button maker. If you scroll down to my sidebar links, you'll see some I made. However, these nifty little buttons can be made to say anything you want. Yes, anything. Look at these -

(These buttons originally made by Jeremy Zawodny)

I can't claim ownership of these buttons, however awesome they are! Here are a couple of links for making buttons - some of them allow you to make buttons with graphics while the others are plain-text versions: McKnight, Zappa, Kalsey.. enjoy!

the luxury box

2008-03-04T15:22:00.001-05:00

after months of nagging the bosses at work that i'm a huge Buffalo Sabres fan and wanted tickets to go watch them in Boston when they came to town to play the Boston Bruins, finally they relented.. and how! i mean, there's a five foot by three foot flag of the Buffalo Sabres hanging in my office, how much more of an indication could i give!!

anyways, the Pepsi luxury box was fantastic, top notch food - prime rib, shrimp cocktail, etc.. beer in the mini-fridge.. the view was awesome too, with exclsuive replay tvs and the works..

of course, it was all the sweeter that the Sabres won!

NB:- I'm headed to Buffalo tomorrow for a short holiday, to catch the Sabres play the Washington Capitals.. now that should be a helluva game

Batalla De Los Tambores

2008-02-26T04:55:00.000-05:00

in case i hadn't mentioned this before, but Godsmack is one of my favorite bands. why? a bunch of reasons - any band that mentions Alice in Chains as their primary influence already has my vote. any band that actually names themselves after an AiC song is flying pretty high on the radar. these guys from Boston make some pretty good music, nice heavy guitar riffs, excellent rasping lyrics and a bass drum that will blow you away.

lead singer Sully is an accomplished musician in his own right, and not just a mic jockey. he plays an absolutely deadly drum set as well, forming the encore piece of their live set - Sully plays with drummer Shannon in a makeshift drum duet-battle which is absolutely amazing.. and here's the clip

i've watched them playing at a college spring festival on an open lawn, a small club scene packed to the rafters, a closed hockey rink opening for Metallica and at an open plan arena on the summer rock festival circuit and they have been fantastic every single time.

'Image Too Large To Display'

2008-02-20T19:22:00.001-05:00

i have a Canon PowerShot A520 digital camera. it's not the greatest digicam in the world, but it fulfills most of the basic requirements of digital photography. for the most part it has behaved itself. the only issue i have had with it in the past was its snobbish intolerance of not indubitable SD memory cards, by haughtily proclaiming "Memory Card Not Readable".

during our recent trip to Chicago, this dinky little device threw a new tantrum. after taking a picture, when i tried to review the image on the camera itself, it shrunk the image to a postage stamp size, and announced "Image Too Large To Display". what the #%&@?! since when did cameras start taking pictures bigger than they could display?! it actually got better - i took out the memory card and slid it into its slot on the computer to see if i could download the pics. on trying to open one of the pictures, the computer promptly hung. when eventually it shook the cobwebs out of its head, it gave me a very interesting nugget of info. apparently twelve of the pictures were each 4Gb in size. at four gigs a pop, these would have to be super high resolution snaps where even specks of dirt would show up on the picture! of course, the biggest irony is that the memory card itself was only one gig in size.. no wild guesses that the data on the card was corrupted.

it's feb. 20th today, kurt cobain would have turned 41 today were he still around. would he still have been making grunge music? who knows. one thing for sure is that he would have been pretty shocked at what passes for music these days. also, it's taken a few years, but it appears finally the stigma surrounding his death is wearing off. memorial concerts have been organized, his hometown Aberdeen changed its welcome sign, the album 'Nevermind' has been inducted to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry (reserved for historically significant recordings), a memorial park and youth center are being planned too. RIP Kurt.

quot et demonstratum (qed)

2008-02-14T20:11:00.005-05:00

came upon a most interesting quote today, which has been happening every day now that i have changed my browser homepage to Google. previously it was the CNN page but i did get quite wearisome of waking up, switching on the comp and being blasted with details about gory deaths, sordid affairs and lurid politics while i was still rubbing sleep out of my eyes in a haze of smoke

oh no, i'm not pretending i haven't seen the date or don't know what day it is - i think i have done my fair part in keeping the commercialism of v-day going. ever since i was a scruffy undergrad trying to scrounge together some change to pick up any flowers bearing a shade of red, i have bowed to the gods of marketing who have deemed that this fourteenth day of february be used to not only enshrine the female half of every relationship equation, but further propagated onto pretty much every other girl/lady/woman who plays some part or the other in your life.

it is thanks to these glamorous denizens of television commercials who in breathy voices gasp their ecstasy to the men in their lives who shower them with jewelry that a pretty comic moment was played out between the gf and me yesterday. having procured well ahead of time a pretty necklace which was proclaimed on the idiot box to be the flavor of the season, i sat confident watching men everywhere scramble to get out of the doghouse. so here we are watching tv, and an ad comes up for the very piece that i have purchased. i ask the girl what she thinks of that, and with a cursory glance she goes "nahh" with nary a thought that there might be subterfuge involved in why i was asking her that! now when i fish the necklace out from behind my back, she ends up looking sheepish and i end up green to the gills. i dunno, i guess you just had to have been there.

anyways, back to the quote i referred to in the beginning:

"Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?"
Philip G. Hamerton, "The Intellectual Life"

January flying by

2008-01-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

this month of January has been whizzing by at warp speed.. between work life, school life and home life, there's really no time to do anything else. besides, it would help if i had exciting or groundbreaking news to reveal, but you've already read or seen or heard the news, and i don't have much to report beyond the death, destruction and distractions that life throws up.

here's a picture i leave you to ruminate on as i am off on a long weekend holiday to Chicago for SuperBowl weekend..

2008 in review

2008-01-10T06:53:00.000-05:00

January -
- went down to Florida for the annual office off-site meeting

February -
- the boss quit and i stepped into his role

March -
- Spring Break in New Orleans

April -
- the gf graduated with her second undergrad degree

May -
- blog's third anniversary

June -
- gf left on a 6-month trip

July -
- nothing eminently bloggable

August -
- new boss started, went back to my old position

September -
- started the MS program in Project Management at Boston University

October -
- it's pretty sad if your highlight of the month is the beginning of the hockey/NHL season

November -
- went to Colorado on a work trip

December -
- return to sanity, the gf is back

onward..

2007-12-31T19:03:00.000-05:00

into another year we move.. here's wishing all of you a 2008 that brings you joy and happiness, and even better than the previous year brought you..

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-24T19:05:00.001-05:00

The State of Massachusetts aka great idea #69

2007-12-18T16:17:00.000-05:00

i refer not to the song by The Dropkick Murphys, the erstwhile unknown but now wildly popular south-boston-irish punk rockers (side note - if you've watched the movie 'The Boondock Saints' then you know what i'm talking about).. and if you haven't heard the song either, then here goes.. of course, if you haven't even heard of the band, then firstly shame on ye lassies and laddies, and secondly here is the song you might know (psst - it was on the soundtrack to the Scorsese movie 'The Departed')

aye, getting back to what i had started saying in the first place.. i think i have the solution to the state debt that the people in the city council have run up with all those fancy-assed projects that they came up with (The Big Dig, etc).. there's a bunch of toll booths here in the city, getting on and off the interstate, in and out of Logan airport and bunches of places. you've all seen the the express lane on the right in any toll booth in the country for people with the passes or stickers or some thingies.. tolls here vary from 50c. to a few bucks at other places.

well, how about a lane on the left then, where there is a fixed $5 toll, and for that princely sum, the occupants of the vehicle get to see titties? simple enough dontcha think.. pull up to the window.. drop your fiver into the bin.. hot chick raises her shirt and gives 'em a good shake rattle and hum.. and the driver drives away having had an eyeful and some boob-induced joie de vivre, with none of the default cussing of the state and road rage that usually happen when passing through a tollbooth..

(image censored because this is not the page for your porn fix, but that one is!)