Funk Babblings

Saturday evening we returned from Pennsic, and I'm almost caught up with life again.

( The Evil Vortex of Youngstown )
( Overcoming Culture Shock )
( A Detour East )
( Where's the ark? )
( Aftermath )

Well, I'd been hoping to head up to the Beachland in Cleveland tonight to see The Reputation, but since we're heading to Pennsic tomorrow and haven't done anything to prepare for it yet, that Cleveland excursion is looking doubtful at this point.

Oh yeah, and for those in Columbus, The Secret Sound Of The NSA is playing at Skully's tonight.

1. I managed to miss the Cleveland date of the Warped Tour this year. Oops. Ah well, I can stand to save the money (about which I may have more to say later). The Columbus date is Aug 17, but (among other things) I'm planning to be at Pennsic then.

2. After they finish the Warped Tour, Bowling For Soup is apparently coming to Canton to play a September 11 show at the local former minor-league ballpark (which I didn't even known existed). This is really cool, but seems very weird to me; I feel like there's more to this story that I'm missing.

Update: BFS is the headlining act of a local radio station's "All American Music Weekend" day one.

3. I often tell people that the best thing about living in Canton (compared to Columbus, at least) is being only an hour from Cleveland. I was reminded of this when I saw the schedule for the Vote For Change Tour. At this writing, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., and John Fogerty are scheduled for five dates. One is in Cleveland (Oct 2), one is in Ann Arbor (Oct 3), and the rest are nowhere near Ohio. And the $25 tickets go toward fighting to defeat Bush.

And speaking of Springsteen, John Kerry's use of his song "No Surrender" at his acceptance speech last week was kind of interesting to me. It comes from the Born In The USA album, which of course was Springsteen's hugest album and got mounds of radio airplay. So much so that I never bothered to buy the album; I figured I'd already gotten sick of half of it being overplayed on the radio, plus the misplaced jingoism that surrounded the album turned me off. So I knew "No Surrender" only from the quiet acoustic version on the Live 1975-1985 album, and I've always loved the song even though I normally prefer rockers like "Cadillac Ranch". Well yesterday I finally bought Born In The USA, and I was amazed that "No Surrender" is a rocker there! So now I like the song even more. (The other non-hits on there are great too, though I still skip over the overly-anthemic title song.)

I realized a couple days ago that I'll miss Comfest in Columbus this year because we'll be at Pagan Spirit Gathering. It's not surprising that they conflict; Comfest is always on the last weekend of June (well, unless wedding planners book the park first), and PSG is always the week surrounding the summer solstice. There are enough non-overlapping years that I haven't had to get used to that conflict the way I've had to get used to PSG always conflicting with Father's Day. The trouble is that both events are important to me, but Comfest is more comfortable for me, especially with all the great music going constantly.

It also looks like Karen will finally get to drag me to Pennsic in August -- unless I'm working by then and can't get away. Or sneezing my head off. Should be quite an experience.

With two week-long camping events coming up, I'm starting to think that renting an SUV (gasp!) might be worthwhile. I wonder if there's some pay-for-miles-not-time deal I can make that will take advantage of not actually driving that whole week. What I really need is an expandable car (forget the flying car, I want to keep my foot) so that normally I can happily drive my beautiful and maneuverable little coupe, then when friends come along it becomes a four-door with plenty of legroom in the back, and when I need to haul stuff it expands into a truck.

Anyway, coming up next weekend is Marcon in Columbus. Only a bunch of geeks would spend Memorial Day Weekend cooped up in a hotel for three days, but it still can be fun. Maybe I'll wander over to Goodale Park at some point to try to make up for missing Comfest. And I'll definitely have to head up to Bernie's on Friday night to catch The Secret Sound Of The NSA celebrating their new release.