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Rittenhouse Square pigeon
Originally uploaded by etacar11

Ok, the pigeon is just a random photo I took in Rittenhouse Square. I didn’t smuggle a camera into the Nine Inch Nails show at Wachovia Center. I should have; the security chick barely glanced in my bag. On the other hand, fiddling with a camera might have detracted from my enjoyment of the concert.  If and when the band posts some shots of the show on their Flickr page, I will post one here.

The day didn’t have an auspicious start: Rob’s car wouldn’t start (we later found out that he had been given the wrong type of battery two weeks prior) so we were delayed in getting to the train station.  Then we got caught in a massive traffic jam on I-95.  We were forced to call Amtrak and change our tickets to the next train.  No way we would have made our original one.  But once on the train everything went smoothly and we got to Philadelphia around 10am.

We bummed around for the afternoon, walked over to Rittenhouse Square and down to the Schuylkill River.  It was drizzly and not that nice a day but whatever.  I didn’t care!

The Wachovia Center was an easy shot down the Broad St. subway line.  Our seats turned out to be great, five rows up from the floor of the arena, on the left side of the stage.  It took a while for the place to fill up, but I think it was pretty near capacity by the time NIN came on.  I was pleasantly surprised (and I think the feeling was shared by many there) by the opening band, a bunch of trippy English dudes called Does It Offend You, Yeah?  I didn’t expect much from them, but they turned out to be pretty cool and worthy of a closer look.

I had only seen Nine Inch Nails live once prior, in 1994 at the Universal Amphitheater in LA.  I was in college at the time and NIN had just broken big with the Downward Spiral album.  During the Fragility tour in 2000, I was living in Hawaii and few bands ever play over there.  NIN wasn’t one of the few.  In 2005, I was living in New York City when they played two shows there.  I tried to get tickets for both and failed each time.  That left me quite angry and resentful.  But I’m over that now…

The show we saw last Friday night, the show Nine Inch Nails is playing every night on the Lights in the Sky tour, is simply the greatest show ever.  Ok, maybe I exaggerate but it’s definitely the best show I’ve ever seen, hands down.  The music itself was amazing enough.  And it would have been a great show with just that.  It was the lightshow that really made the night.  What they did is really hard to describe, mainly because I don’t know how any of it works.  But I can say there were at times screens in front of and behind the band.  Sometimes opaque, sometimes transparent.  Lots and lots of stuff going on throughout the show.  Damn, words just fail to convey how cool it was.  Trent Reznor sounded amazing.  You’d never know he’s had some throat/voice issues on this tour that led to the postponement of two earlier shows.  His speaking voice did sound a little off, that was the only hint.  Did I mention he had the magical power to control what the screens were showing, just with touch?  AWESOME.

Anyway, two hours of visual coolness and lots of great songs from the NIN catalog.  I hated to see it end.  Now I’m trying to figure out how to see it again.  There’s no DC date on the upcoming Fall leg of the tour.  The closest is in Charlottesville, VA.  A little farther than I am willing to drive but maybe (fingers crossed) a DC date will be announced later.  Please, please, please!

Mall of America – Me and Lego Boba
Originally uploaded by etacar11

I only spent about two days in Minneapolis this past weekend, so I didn’t get to see much. The purpose of the trip was to see my grad school friend Yan get married. I didn’t want to use up too many vacation days so I flew in on Friday and left Sunday (the wedding was Saturday).

My Magellan GPS, bought just before the trip, performed admirably.  It took a few minutes to update once I left the airport rental car garage, but once it did, I got to the hotel with no problems whatsoever.  I can’t imagine traveling without one of these now.  Oh, and Hertz gave me a Mustang!

I think I was the only one at the wedding who stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.  I have to say, it was not bad at all.  A king-size bed, couch, coffee table, free wi-fi, free breakfast, exercise room.  The people staying at the Doubletree didn’t have all that and the Doubletree is a supposedly “better” hotel.  Yeah, right.

There was only time to do one sightseeing destination on Saturday morning/afternoon (the wedding was in the evening).  So my friend Don and I went to the Mall of America.  Just to say we’d been there.  There’s an amusement park in the center of the damned thing, so that’s where we made a beeline for.  One log flume and two rollercoasters later, I felt a little queasy and wondered if I was getting too old for that stuff.  Maybe it was just the environment shift from traveling or jet lag.  Hopefully.

The wedding of Yan and Sonia was very simple and informal.  Very sweet.  It was in an oak grove a short hike from the park pavilion where we had the dinner afterward. Since Yan is a vegan, let’s just say the food wasn’t to my taste.  But I tried to try everything.  Leftovers from dinner the night before (my room had a fridge and microwave too!) helped when it was over.

My GPS dutifully got me back to the airport on Sunday.  There was lots more in Minneapolis I wish I could have seen.  Another time…

Point Fermin Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by etacar11

It’s been about a week since we got back from California and I’ve been meaning to post on the last part of our time there.

Thursday, July 24th, was my brother’s 39th birthday. We visited his grave at Westminster Memorial Park and released balloons while singing Happy Birthday. My parents have done this every year since his death, but it was my first time being there. It was a nice thing to do for him, though I had trouble singing. I miss him so much, every day.

That afternoon, my mom and I sat on the beach for a while, several blocks north of the Huntington Beach pier.  It was a bit windy and we watched two men doing something called “kitesurfing.” It’s an extreme sport involving (not surprisingly) kites and surfing.  It looked very difficult and dangerous.  But those guys seemed to be having no trouble at all.

On Friday, we drove up to Palos Verdes to visit my dad’s old boss from when he worked in Seal Beach in the ’70’s, Bill and his wife Maureen. We went to their house lots of times when I was growing up, though we hadn’t been there in many years.  It’s a very beautiful area on a peninsula overlooking the Pacific and the hills are literally “rolling.”  One of the roads we used is quite bumpy due to the constant shifting of the land.  At one point, years ago, I think Bill and Maureen and their neighbors feared their entire neighborhood would slide into the ocean.

After a nice lunch at Bill and Maureen’s, we visited Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro, as seen above.  It’s basically a very fancy Victorian house with a light on top.  It stands on the tip of the peninsula marking the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor.  The inside is only viewable by tour, so we went on one.  It houses related artifacts and period furniture.  My mom thought the guide was a bit of a dweeb (didn’t know much in her opinion) but we got to look out of the tower and were able to view Angel’s Gate Lighthouse, which is at the end of a long breakwater in the harbor itself.  Apparently you CAN walk out to that one, but doing so risks arrest.

On Saturday my parents indulged me by devoting the day completely to visiting places I wanted to go to.  We drove down to Mission San Juan Capistrano, the “Jewel of the California Missions” and, I think, the most famous historical site in Orange County.  The grounds of the old mission were filled with lovely gardens.  Beautiful flowers.  I don’t know much about California’s history (I never went to school there) but the ruins of the old Church and the cemetery were interesting.  The famous swallows return to the Mission in March, so we didn’t see anything of them, beyond a few displays.  Oh well, some other time.

We decided it would be nicer to return to Huntington Beach via Pacific Coast Highway, instead of the freeway.  This was convenient because it took us right past one of the museums I wanted to visit, the Laguna Art Museum.  My parents didn’t care about going so they walked around Laguna Beach while I went to the museum.  It was small and compact, so I saw everything in a short amount of time.  The current special exhibition, In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor, was…strange and disturbing, although the imagery wasn’t all that shocking to me, considering that a lot of the music I listen to uses it.  I really came to the museum to see the works of the California Impressionists and they had some nice ones on display.  So I was satisfied.

The drive up PCH took us past the hospital where my siblings and I were born, Hoag Memorial in Newport Beach.   That was a little on the strange side.  My parents, of course, were constantly pointing out “new” stuff along the road, stuff that wasn’t there thirty years ago.

Sunday, July 27th, was our final full day in California.  It was also the day of the Huntington Beach High School alumni picnic, one of the main reasons for our trip.  Since I never went to anything but pre-school in H.B., I had no interest in the picnic whatsoever.  So I contented myself to walking around downtown.  I walked out on the pier again, caught a glimpse of the U.S. Open of Surfing.  I also walked down to the “Ultimate Challenge” statue, at the intersection of PCH and Huntington St.  It’s a bronze statue of a surfer catching a wave.  Nude.  My mom said that part made for a lot of controversy when it was unveiled in the 70’s.  Ultimately, even with lunch, I couldn’t waste enough time wandering, so I was forced to help man the t-shirt table at the picnic with my aunt.  It wasn’t all that bad, I guess.

It was a good trip.  I fear I’m starting to seriously consider moving back out there.  But not for a couple of years, I think…