Remember when your mom used to say don’t play with your food?
A dolphin with his dinner
(Source: sillybillieful)
The Ocean Blue at Café du Nord, San Francisco
I feel that I should start off by giving a shout out to Last.fm, because without this show coming up on my page as something I’d be interested in, I would have never known about it. I wasn’t even aware that the band still existed. I grew up in Ohio, and used to go see The Ocean Blue all the time back in the day. As far as I knew, their popularity was more of a regional than national thing, so I was surprised as hell to see that they were playing not one but two shows in San Francisco…in 2013!
I was a bit hesitant to go, because years ago I had heard that when one of the original members came out, he was kicked out of the band. Googling now, it seems as though this was “vehemently denied” by the rest of the band. And if the dudes next to me at the show, who were doing what could best be described as “dirty dancing” for the majority of the set, could get past that rumor—so could I. Nostalgia won out for me, anyways.
It’s a little depressing when you see a headliner onstage setting up for their set after the opening band, especially when they used to be at a place where they had someone else to do that. But, a few of the (over)enthusiastic people in the audience proved that—20 years and 3,000 miles later—they still have a strong fanbase. Good for them. As I was standing there watching them set up and listening to the intermission music that was being played (Nick Heyward), I came to the conclusion that this was the whitest spot in San Francisco…at least for that evening.
As soon as they started playing, I was immediately transported back to my school years. It was as though 100 years had passed and no time at all had passed at the same time. I’m not sure that is a positive thing to say about a band, but it definitely made me happy after a long and crappy week. Even struggling through some audio equipment difficulties, they sounded good. And rather than blaming the sound guy about a couple of ear-shattering feedback bursts, the singer was really polite about it…which proves that they are deserving of their longevity.
It is easy to get caught up in one of these “resurrection of a band from your youth” situations and just see it as a nostalgia show. But I really liked the new songs that they played, so much so that I bought the new CD on the way out. (Yes, I occasionally still listen to CDs.) It definitely has an early 90s feel to it, but I wouldn’t consider it dated.
The one negative thing I will say about the show (and you can tell from the video I have embedded): David, honey, do not chew gum while you are singing. It’s not only annoying, and my pet peeve, but I can’t imagine that it helps the sound coming out of your mouth.
The wild women of the Wednesday Whist Club, whilst in Tampa.
“Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was played widely in the 18th and 19th centuries. It derives from the 16th century game of trump or ruff, via Ruff and Honours. Although the rules are extremely simple, there is enormous scope for scientific play.” —Wikipedia
Boy, that one in the middle sure looks like Mitch from Real Genius.
Someone with Bay Area acreage in the year 2080: please build a huge columbarium called Tomblr.
Per Wikipedia, Amazon eventually bought Egghead Software’s assets. I wonder if they’d license an image of the Professor for some “I worked at Egghead” T-shirts.
Was there not room in the Grunge tent for late-model Gurus?
I didn’t love this album at the time, but it grows on me every year.
The Cars - Hello Again (by RhinoEntertainment)
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This is how the internet works:
Merlin posts a photo of his daughter with the caption, “Eclectic.”
Seeing that word standing alone, I can’t help but hear Ric Ocasek saying it.
Now I’ve got a Heartbeat City thing going.
In the hopes of excising the earwig, I pull up the OFFICIAL VIDEO on YouTube.
Now I have no idea what I’m looking at.
(As usual, the comments are the best part of the nightmare. “Jazz Bass,” from 2 months ago? That’s not nice!)
We are at the cemetery again, and it’s a little gross.
“They were like, ‘meet us at the cemetery,’ and I was all, ‘okay, if you want…’”
