Tuesday: Go off to explore the city. Check Twitter at the hotel and realize that the East Coast got hit with an earthquake. Wonder if anything fell down at our place? (Nope.) Taste a bunch of different scotch whiskys. Awesome. I’m particular to the Islays and Speysides.

Wednesday: Climb Arthur’s Seat, wearing neither the right shoes nor the proper clothing. Still pretty awesome. Eat a very very good lamb burger.

Thursday: More random city exploring, including a visit to the very cool Camera Obscura and the National Museum of Scotland.

Friday: We grab a tour across Scotland to Stirling Castle and Loch Katrine. It rains (first time on the whole trip it really rained). When we get home, we realize that Hurricane Irene is going to make our lives miserable (i.e. our flight was already canceled). Make a billion dollar phone call to Delta and get our flights switched to Saturday, rather than Sunday.

Saturday: Get to the airport very very early. Which turns out to be a blessing, as they can’t find our reservation. An hour or so of phone calls and computer wizardry gets us on our flight to Paris, but rather than a 1 hour layover, we’ve now got a 7 hour layover. And what is probably the last flight to Boston.

Sunday: Slept in my own bed. Turns out Hurricane Irene is all bluster. Some leaves down, some rain, but a pretty quiet day of photo uploading, laundry, and detox. And this blather.

Well, here’s another reason to laugh at them.

Mike Andelman: We walk in and the hostess who’s the typical hot woman, rude, cold- as-ice, never would talk to me in high school-type girl…So she goes, “Two?”, and I said yes, and she looks at us and says, “I’m sorry, we’re not open until 5:30, so there’s nothing I can do.”

Dan Andelman: And what time was this at?

Mike: 5:05.

Eddie Andelman: It was about 5:10.

<snip>

Mike: And it’s not like this was 8pm on a Saturday night. It’s 5 o’clock, and guess what, if the owner of Grill 23 was standing next to this dumb hostess, this moronic hostess who was just getting her, uh, jollies off by sticking to the rules of her little brochure in a little binder, this little monkey, her only job is to look at this binder and say don’t let people in ‘till 5:30…

Dan: Although in her defense she was good-looking apparently. I’d like to see a picture. Was she wearing yoga pants? These are things I want to know. I have a thing for hostesses.

Mike: There’s not a hostess who’s not good-looking, because they’re incompetent and can’t do anything else in life. If you can’t model, when you’re good-looking enough and not tall enough to model, you stand behind a little box and say, How many?

Jesus. What enormous tools.

(Via Server Not Servant.)

(from WHDH)

(from Boston.com)

(from me)

Over the past few weeks (about 6, to be exact), we’ve been had a nice run of concerts. First, we had a bill of We Were Promised Jetpacks (best name in music) and Tokyo Police Club (one of the best names in music) at Royale in Boston.

I’d been a bit turned off over the past couple of months at shows, as the crowds had gotten decidedly disinterested in the music and interested in chatting it up and being seen (which is why a place like TT the Bear’s is nice — no one goes there to “be seen”). This was show was better — it was a random Thursday night, school was over, so it wasn’t a scene. It was just a few hundred people who liked the bands there to check them out. Both were spot on.

Then, a few weeks later, we hit up Bank of America Pavilion (probably my second least favorite place to see a show) to see Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire, at the time, were probably the only band I really love that I’d never seen live. They didn’t disappoint. Just a spectacle from beginning to end, only tempered by the fact that BoA Pavilion is such a craptastic venue.

Finally, a few days after that, we checked out Interpol at House of Blues. They played a nice mix of older stuff and stuff off the new album (which sounded pretty good). Interpol isn’t a hugely dynamic band (especially compared to Arcade Fire), but it was a good crowd and Interpol seemed to feed off it and really ripped into things.

Anyway, after all that, I decided I wanted to screw around and learn iMovie a bit. So, for your pleasure, here’s four bands and probably 5.5 hours of music cut down to 8 minutes.

It started with seeing Ben Folds at The Orpheum.

Actually not one of my favorite Ben Folds’ shows, but it even a bad Ben show is pretty fun. He played his whole new album as his set (followed by an encore of solo and Ben Folds Five stuff), which would normally be ok, except the album hadn’t come out yet.

Next up was the first Dear Leader show in a good while at TT the Bears.

I love me some Dear Leader. It’d been awhile since they’d played together, but it was just like old times.

I also was lucky enough to see Fleet Foxes play in Somerville. Such a great great sound.

Then, I got to go take advantage of my season tickets and see opening night of the Celtics, watching them raise the 17th NBA Championship banner. It was a moment that solidified to me that I’ve always been a bigger Cs fan than a Sox fan (though it’s close). I loved being at opening day in 2005 when the Red Sox raised that first banner in 86 years. Being at the Garden and watching the Celtics raise the first banner in 22 years had a much more significant impact on me. Just the byproduct of growing up with the original Big Three, I guess.

Later, another one my favorite unknownish bands played *their* first show in a while. Stellastarr* rocked out at Great Scott and the gf and I got to watch from about 5 feet away.

Being 5 feet away left me with some temporary hearing issues, which thankfully went away the next night, where we went and saw The Decemberists at The Orpheum, and what might be my favorite show of the year.

A week or so later, we headed over to The Paradise to see an entirely different type of band, as Bang Camaro came and rocked our faces off.

Changing styles yet again, the gf surprised me and took me to see someone I consider quite possibly the greatest pop musician/performer of all time: Brian Wilson. While it’s a bit depressing to see him perform these days, it’s just such a monumental thing to be *seeing Brian Wilson.*

Finally, thanks again to my wonderful gf, we got some upgraded Celtics seats and rather than sitting in section 305 row 11, we sat in section 6 row 3.

And now I’m on vacation. So, expect to read some more from me.

Check them out for a little glimpse of what it was like that night …

GINO Time! Complete with Paul Pierce dancing on the table:

The last few seconds before the Celtics were officially NBA Champs:

I’ll post a couple of more when I have time. For now, enjoy (much like 750 other people have enjoyed my Gino video!)

I have tickets to game 6.

If there is one, this is what I’ll be wearing:

Oh yes. Just like this guy: