All Things Joey
( @zanelamprey, #FreiBrothers )
Drinking Made Easy posted the 2nd part of my California Vineyards series. This article is about a visit to the super secret-Frei Brothers vineyard which is not open to the public.
Check it out: Drinking Made Easy: A Visit to Frei Brothers Vineyard
Opening Act: Jessica Lea Mayfield
Date: Saturday, December 2nd, 2011
Location: Academy of Music – Philadelphia, Pa
This is the second time I have seen Mr. Adams this year. My wife and I took a trip to California two months ago when it was unclear if Ryan was going to do a tour of the East Coast, not that I am complaining, any excuse to go to California is a good one. You can check my review of the California show right here.
When I found out that Ryan was playing the Academy, I was excited. It is a place that lends itself to good concert behavior and the acoustics are fantastic. Just to get it out of the way, everything about the venue was great last night and I am always glad to see a show there.
[Opening Act: Jessica Lea Mayfield]
My friend Jack commented on how great her guitar sounded last night (really good tone). I wanted to make sure that I started off with a compliment before I got into any kind of critique. I don’t want to be overly harsh, but Mayfield’s songs all sounded similar and had a similar theme which took away from the performance (until the last song where she mixed it up a bit with little yip).
Mayfield has a nice voice and certainly wasn’t intimidated by the Philadelphia crowd, but she would do herself a service by introducing faster tempo songs about anything other than bad boyfriends, I really think she would shine with a band or at least another person on stage to banter with.
[Main Event]
Ryan came out and went right to business. The Philadelphia crowd was much more vocal than the California audience (no shock there), but at least my wife and I were not sitting in front of a group of drunk girls. Ryan definitely mixed up the set list between shows (yes, he did play “Come Pick Me Up”, now we can all shut up about it).
He knocked out excellent renditions of “Sylvia Plath”, “Dear Chicago” and “English Girls Approximately”, but the whole show was outstanding and (not to repeat myself) a love note to the fans. I thought his banter in California was great, but he turned it up a notch in Philadelphia. Adams went on this whole riff about Ghost Hunters when his guitars went out of tune and then connected it into making fun of loud audience members (you know there is always that one dude who has to be heard).
Adams left the stage and quickly came back out for an encore. He was going to play another 30 minutes but his main set went long and the teamsters shut him down. He managed to knock out a surprisingly earnest rendition of Ratt’s “Round and Round”.
Another fantastic show by one of the best song writers in the business.
( #Cybermonday, #Xmas)
Black Friday is over. The masses turned out in record numbers to snag cheap, off-brand televisions, video games, and whatever the new Tickle Me Elmo is for this year. People crammed into stores on Thursday night and of course, there were incidents. It is easy to jump all over a few people acting like animals, because even though we all want deals, we don’t want to be this:
These events eventually lead to the discussion of how bad consumerism is and how the CHRIST should be put back into CHRISTmas (I cannot count how many times I have seen this on facebook in the last three days). The history lesson that I am about to break out (again) is not going for a whole “anti-Christianity” soap box moment, I am just trying to make you feel better about buying that flat panel. If there was a Jesus, most scholars (even Christian ones) do not think he was born in December. So if Jesus’ birthday is not on December 25th, then what are we celebrating?
The easy answer is: whatever the hell you want.
Many cultures throughout history had year-end festivals. Most were focused on the winter solstice and the fact that the days would be longer and brighter again. In fact, most historians believe that the Romans, while accepting Christianity, grafted their pagan celebrations and stories into Christian constructs to help ease the assimilation.
Looking at modern times and with our current shitty economy in mind, the whole “black friday” craze is a corrective market action to ensure (mostly retail) stores and business would become profitable for the year. I came across an article a few weeks ago (that I cannot find) that reported most retailers would not like to go to such extreme measures at year end to bring in customers, but consumers are conditioned to shop at the last minute. This is a “chicken and the egg” conversation, but the bottom line is that people are conditioned to shop during Black Friday and the last few weeks of the year; as a result, the stores save some of their best deals until that time.
I am by no means advocating overly-materialistic lifestyle, but I can say with no doubt that people like to get together at the end of the year and give each other gifts and have nice meals. If you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa… it does not matter. All of these “holidays” were pumped up and over promoted for the last 100 years because retailers want you in the stores buying stuff. Knowing all this, I say don’t fight it.
Leverage the sales, the marketing, the time off from work to spend time with the people you love. If the economy has you in a pinch, don’t stress out about it, talk it out and find a better way to spend the pennies you have doing something memorable (it still puts money into the economy and your credit won’t be going nuclear). I like calling the holiday season Xmas because “X” in math is a variable that stands for anything you need it to. For me X = an excuse to have friends and family over for dinner, exchange small gifts, and a nice way to spend a few days off from work.
( @zanelamprey, #MacMurray )
Drinking Made Easy has posted another article. This one is about my trip to MacMurray vineyard in California. Check it out:
Also since the good people at Kress made this article possible, if you are in South Jersey, stop by today and during the holidays to get a nice bottle of wine by good people. You know they are good, I married into their family 😉
( #MeanJoe, #Espositos )
Here is a holiday treat Lombardi style. My Mom found this article and scanned it. For those people who are fans of my dad and his “alias” Joe Knit, check this out…
( #Occupy, #SuperCommittee)
For the last month or so I have been watching the Occupy movement in major cities waiting for it to turn bad. At first, I thought it would last a few days and was hesitantly supportive. It is about time Americans got angry at the state of this country (30 years too late if you ask me). The days turned into weeks and the movement was turning into a late night punch-line. A few weeks ago my wife asked me what I thought about the whole situation and I said “it is going to turn ugly.” She gave me and odd look and asked why…
Why? Because the people in the streets do not have a plan of action. They don’t even have the same goal. Going in front of businesses and protesting is not going to accomplish anything. Congratulations! You scared a few stock brokers and they had their sushi delivered…now what? Across the country people are protesting at the doors of corporations. These are the same people who are complaining about not having jobs… that does not make any sense. As the lack of focus and clarity expands, people are getting frustrated and making trouble.
Not big trouble. Little things like throwing feces and being generally disgruntled, but that was enough. The police have been waiting for an opening because they are getting tired of baby-sitting. The city governments also want these people gone ASAP because they are driving up costs. So where did it all go wrong?
The Occupy movement should not have started in New York, it should have started and ended in Washington. People are angry? Stake out congress. Yesterday’s “super-committee” failure should have been the final nail in the coffin. This goes far beyond Democrat vs. Republican, this is about a group of over-privileged, under-educated morons that have bankrupt this country. We let the devils in during Nixon’s reign and never got them out.
Screaming about the lack of jobs? Why aren’t we adjusting our trade regulations to make more domestic products? There should be a 5 year scale back strategy to make more products in America (that would cover the training needed to get plant workers properly educated). Congress will not support trade regulations because our Chinese overlords would be quite pissed.
What about a congressional study about the jobs we are outsourcing overseas? The claim is that we don’t have the right people domestically to do the jobs… for the moment let us assume that is true. The action item should then be to figure out where we are weak and develop high school level courses to train our kids how to do those jobs. Offer tax breaks to companies willing to open domestically and hire these kids (I don’t think you need a college education to work in a call center).
That would create a situation were young Americans can make a modest living without going to college. This opens the colleges back up to the people who should be there and stops it from being a 4 year, $100,000 baby sitting service. In case you are missing the point of this paragraph: NOT EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE (the system is broken, you are being robbed). Employers need to stop looking down at trade schools and start supporting and investing in them.
The protesters need to focus on the people who are the most venerable to this form of feedback… the politicians. Washington should be the target, the hotels that the congressmen sleep at during the week should be the targets. Let the swine known that Americans are on to them and it is going to stop. They need to know that their bullshit super-committees, weak spending cuts, and complete inability to develop a strategy is going to cost them their golden tickets and parachutes.
Go home protesters, get your shit together, regroup, and buy bus tickets to Washington.