U2

Amy, Pete, Ian and I went to see U2 at Gillette Stadium on Monday night. I haven't seen U2 since the late 80s and boy, have their shows changed! Of course, I know, it goes without saying. They can fill a stadium of that size and they can afford to have a crazy expensive stage set-up. Their performance, however, is still as great as ever. I'm not the world's biggest U2 fan, but I'll see them live anytime somebody wants to spring for the tickets!

Attending this concert came out of Ian going to see a U2 3-D at the IMAX theater of The New England Aquarium with Amy, Jeff and Lauren. After the movie Ian said to Amy "Now I have to see them live." To which Amy replied "Next time they come, I'll get tickets!" And get tickets she did! She even joined the U2 website so that she could take advantage of presale purchasing. She bought the tickets about 4 or 5 months ago and it was a topic of conversation all summer.

The big night finally arrived and we headed out to Foxboro. The campus of Gillette is HUGE! They have the whole Patriot Place thing going on as well as ample parking. The parking, however, is not free! You must pay $40. to park, which might not have been so bad had we been able to exit the lot after the show in a timely fashion. But no, TWO HOURS just to get out onto route 1. This was one of only two complaints I had with the evening.

Once we got in and found our seats, this is what we were looking at. It's a space ship that took on a life of its own once the show started.

A closer view so you can see just how big the thing was. YIKES! There are a couple of bridges from the main stage out to the ring that moved all the way around.

Ian and I.

Amy and Pete very excited for the show to start.

Bono up on the expandable screen, 360 degrees of it. That thing was crazy! It hung down from the underside of the spaceship and could be stretched down to the floor!

http://www.youtube.com/user/pennycariolo#play/all/uploads-all/0/spcMKPZZvJw

This link takes you to a video of the song With or Without You. I didn't get the whole song because of my second complaint of the night. This was the second to last song of the evening, they were about 2/3 through it and some venue staff guy comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder and tells me if I don't "turn it off and put it away", he'll confiscate my camera. There were at least four other people right in front of me doing the exact same thing, but because I was at the top of the row, I get the shit. If you watch the whole video, you can hear him saying it at the very end.

All in all, I'd have to say it was a GREAT show and I'm so glad we went.

Thanks Amy and Pete!!!

NO, WALTER, YOU'RE NOT WRONG, YOU'RE JUST............

Saturday night was the first of two nights of LEBOWSKIFEST at the House of Blues. Dan, Bridget, Ian, my friend Jon, and I went to the movie portion, Sunday night is the bowling/costume competition portion. There were a few people dressed up in costume but the majority of people were wearing t-shirts with images/lines from the movie on them. I made t-shirts for us to wear, a picture of Lenin saying "I am the walrus". If you haven't seen the movie yet, please rent it, it's hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WZOQJTMHVI

Before the movie started, there was an opening band, The Black Diamond Heavies. I did record a song and tried to upload it but Blogger was not cooperating. Click on the link to see it on youtube.

Here's a review I lifted from their MySpace:

"the Heavies like to keep things as raw and ground-up as dirt - drums with a trashcan rattle that sound huge and far away (like they were recorded in a wide-open space down the street) and overdriven Fender Rhodes. That's all there is to it, but then again, there's so much more." --Phoenix New Times

After the movie ended, I bought their cd, EVERY DAMN TIME. Check them out!

They guys who started Lebowskifest get dressed up as bowling pins and do the intros, they also have a guy dressed as the Dude who travels with them. Not a great picture, but you get the idea.

It was a little bit like seeing the Rocky Horror Picture Show with people yelling lines along with the movie. And, of course, they were piping the sound through the club sound system which was kick-ass! The White Russians were flowing and a good time was had by all.

Next year we're going to the bowling portion, Jon and I are already in costume discussions, can't wait!

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Got a new phone last week. It isn't red, we couldn't find it in red, but still a great phone. I haven't even played with everything it can do, but it's loaded with music for my walks and the sound quality is fantastic! I have a set of earbuds made by iLUV and they're the best I've ever had!

The only problem so far is that I have some homemade ringtones on my old phone that I want to transfer and I was having difficulty doing that. I have since found that the files are Mpegs that need to be converted to QCP files, so I'm going to download a converter and see if that works. If not, I'm stuck with the kooky ringtones on the phone. It won't be horrible, but the tones on the old phone were made by Ian, especially for me. I miss them.

WALK 'N ROLL

In the morning, after dropping Ian at the train, I go for a "power" walk. Swinging arms, handweights, headphones, the whole nine yards. For the longest time I listened to disco because back in the day of aerobics classes that's what we worked out to. Recently though, I've needed something more motivational. After seeing Motley Crue last month, I decided that Metal would do the job.



I have downloaded into my mp3 player Motley Crue, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Motorhead, so far, and those 70 songs took about 4 hours. I still have many, many more songs to go through in our iTunes library. The reason it takes so long to load them in is that I have to listen to each one to see if it has the proper speed to keep me going fast enough.

When I hear the opening guitar on It's a Long Way to the Top or the riff at the beginning of Dr. Feelgood, I can feel the endorphins kick in and it makes me walk harder! It takes all I have to keep from headbanging while I'm walking down the street.

STUDIO ENVY

This is a picture of my friend Kendra in her studio, which is in her house!

I have SERIOUS studio envy. I would LOVE to have a room of my own. It would have a dedicated cutting table, a sewing table, shelves for my fabric/notions stash, a place to keep all my yarn, my loom, the spinning wheel, and my dyepots! Ideally, it would be ground-level with a slider out to a concrete slab so that I could do my dyeing right outside and not have to worry about being messy. It would have a big utility sink and a washing machine. Outside, right next to the concrete slab, there would also be a nice clothesline to hang all my dyed projects on for natural drying. Everything would smell so good! AND it would be big enough so that my fiber friends could come and play with me!!!

A girl can dream...