What are concerts at The Paradise like these days?

I'm guessing they are a bit different than back in the day when my parents saw Jan & Dean there.* Sarah and I ventured out mid-week and got the full experience.  What follows is a brief timeline of highlights**:

8:15: Sarah and I arrive and scope out a largely empty venue.  The bulk of the activity is centered left of the stage where 3 girls are cheering on 2 obese white guys rapping about growing up in Lowell, MA.  I heard the phrase "Mill city hip hop" thrown around quite a bit.  It's important to note that they had a buddy standing behind a speaker and cueing up their fresh beats on an iPod for them.

8:18: The wonder twins wrap up their song.  

"Thank you very much! Anybody here from Lowell?"

Inordinate screams from the 3 girls up front

"You ladies from Lowell?"

In unison "No way!  We're from Fall RivAH! Whooooooo!"

Sarah and I suddenly realize that these girls are way ahead of us and head to the bar for PBR tall boys.

8:23: As the Wannabes from Western Mass launch into to their favorite song, "MySpace Bitches", Sarah and I sit down in an effort to ignore the lyrics and focus on people-watching.  

8:38:  During the second opener, who was actually very talented and politically conscious, I run into a girl from college that I haven't seen in years.  As I try and ignore her twitching, follow her rambling conversation, and figure out how she ended up at this concert in particular, it dawns on me that there are a few more chemicals in play than I realized.  I slowly extract myself from the conversation and focus back on the performer who is taking off his clothes to reveal a red white and blue Evel Knievel jumpsuit.   

9:46: While waiting for the headliner to come on, I catch the 3 girls from Fall River looking at me and talking.  Before I have a chance to mentally review my self defense moves, one of them is walking towards me.  

"If yah wunderin' why my girlfriend's lookin atcha it's becahse ur drinking P.B.Ahs.  She fahckin loves that beah.  It's huh fahvorite!"

Stunned into silence by the onslaught of a South Shore accent, I say nothing as she walks back to her two wobbly friends.  I feebly raise my beer and let out a breath of relief that I don't have to explain away a black eye at work tomorrow.

9:53: Still waiting for the headliner, I decide that this would be a good time to make friends with my Fall Rivah Fans.  (I'm 3 deep at this point)  I stroll over and cheers them.

"So you guys are from Fall River?"

"Fahck yeah we are!" says the one I met earlier

"Oh cool.  I lived in Providence for a while so I know a couple people from there."

Silence.  Why am I trying polite conversation with these girls!?  I change tacks.

"So you guys like PBR?"

The one who was looking at me earlier perks up.  "Fahck yeah I do!  Lemme tell you something.  I'd be drinking one right now except that bahtender won't serve me.  She said she wouldn't gimme a beah because I'm hobbling around.  I broke my fahcking leg.  I'm in a gahddamn brace.  Of cawse I'm hobbling.  Gimme a fahcking beah!  That girl's a C**T."

Thankfully at that same moment Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip started playing.  It was an awesome show. 

*That's a true story by the way.  My parents went there (post Dead Man's Curve) on one of their first dates.

**All times are approximate.

WTF?

BEIJING (Reuters) - A once drug-addled elephant fed heroin-laced bananas by illegal traders will return home after emerging clean from a three-year detox programme on China's tropical island province of Hainan.

The four-year-old bull elephant, referred to alternately as "Big Brother" or "Xiguang" in state media reports, was captured in 2005 in southwest China by traders who used spiked bananas to control him.

After police arrested the traders and freed Xiguang a few months later, the elephant was confirmed to be suffering from withdrawal symptoms and sent to a wild animal protection centre in Hainan for rehab, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

A year of methadone injections at five times the human dosage had helped wean Xiguang off his addiction.

Now clean, Xiguang was expected to arrive on Saturday at a wildlife park in Kunming, capital of the elephant's home province of Yunnan on the mainland.

Xiguang's return would cap a 1,500-km journey home, Xinhua said, and mark another step in the elephant's triumph over addiction.

¿Como se llama su llama?

Jessie recently returned from Peru. It was the latest in her whirlwind adventures around the globe. It was only during a weekend jaunt to Maine to visit her parents that I discovered she had met a new friend in Peru who ended up traveling back with her. The friend's name is Judy. Judy had been staying at her parent's cottage since her arrival on U.S. soil and part of the motivation for returning to Maine was to escort Judy home with us on the Amtrak. This turned into a little more than we bargained for since Judy is a llama.

Ok. I'm lying. She's a baby alpaca and she was a huge hit with the Amtrak staff.



Yes, that is a picture of a Chinese statue with Jessie's face super-imposed on it.

Did I mention that we also got free tap lessons from the world famous Sally Caldwell Fisher? She's extremely exclusive so we're lucky she was in a generous mood.

Can you stand it!?

It's been a while since I've played the obsessed aunt. Bath time in the laundry sink. Is there anything better?

Have you checked out the map lately?

Really quick: I take a significant amount of satisfaction from checking out the map on the left side of my blog and looking at all the dots.The dots represent the people all over the world who have looked at my blog. It's extremely vain. I get that.

How come I don't get more comments from you people? How did you get here? Is it a six degrees type situation where all of these people are connected through the 6 friend blogs I have listed? I'm dying to know.

Of course I'm aware of my core readers (i.e. my friends) and can account for their dots in Boston, Providence, Seattle, New York and Denver but all the others? I don't have any relatives chilling off the coast of Madagascar or summering in Iceland. At least none that I know of. Uncle Olaf? Make yourself known please.

How slow is it?

It's so slow that I have snuck onto my blog to post during work. This has only happened once in the whole 15 months I've been with The Firm. That was Tuesday. I don't talk about The Firm because The Firm doesn't advertise. Unlike Bossman, The Firm is a real employer with real expectations. They will probably find out that I'm blogging on the company dime and there will be repercussions. Makes you feel a little dangerous right?

A slow office is a very funny place. Especially when all of your management team has enough sense to take the day off. It's like a bad indoor recess. We're a half an hour from the bell ringing and people are really beginning to snap. One of our advisors just hid their phone in one girl's filing and preceded to call it every 5 seconds just to drive the her nuts. I wish it was as entertaining as the episode of The Office where Jim hides Andy's phone in the ceiling. It wasn't.

The whole situation is exacerbated by the fact that our internet network blocks out most of the interesting sites to visit online. People are reduced to re-reading CNN.com or browsing the new sale items on PotteryBarn.com. One connected employee had a friend send him flash versions of Tetris and Pac-Man that are disguised as Excel documents so they don't get flagged on the way in. That's what we've been reduced to...domestic cellular terrorism and contraband Atari games. Who knew the Financial District was a Communist enclave?

Are you next? Am I next!?

Let's reflect on this whole "catching the bouquet" thing for a moment. As I understand it, it's customary for the bride to throw her bouquet into a group of all the unmarried, female guests at her wedding. The idea is that whoever catches the bouquet is destined to be the next one to be married. When I was a little girl, I always thought of how magical it would be to catch the bouquet and know that I would be one karmic step closer to my own big day. Having just recently returned from a wedding, it seems that attitudes towards this age old wedding tradition may be changing.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times. Perhaps cynicism is winning. Perhaps it was because we were in California and everything works a little bit differently there. Whatever the case may be, my first bouquet toss experience was nothing like I (or my 10 year-old self) expected it to be. To be fair, I have been to a couple other weddings. However, I was either too young or, in one recent and much more amusing case, too drunk to participate in the gaggle of single girls grasping for that iconic floral symbol of marital hope.

Then came Hilary and Josh's wedding. Sometime after the mountain top ceremony and before the barefoot dancing to a gypsy jazz band, word spread through the crowd that Hilary was getting ready to throw the bouquet. Personally, I wasn't all that thrilled to join the throng. Having no boyfriend/fiance/male life partner to speak of, I didn't really feel like robbing some other, more relationship-ly inclined girl of her chance to be "next."

What I quickly realized is that none of the other girls around were too keen on it either. After lots of huffing from us and lots of prodding from the aunts and mothers in attendance, we assembled one of the most lackluster bands of bouquet-catchers in history. I thought I had positioned myself well. I stood in the back and way off to the side. I was behind tall people. I refrained from making eye contact with the Hilary in case she mistook my apathy for quiet desperation. Then the moment came. Purple calla lillies and orange rosebuds were flying through the air. Time really did slow down (that part of the stereotype is absolutely true). I breathed a sigh of relief after taking stock of the bouquet's trajectory and deciding it was definitely headed right at the girl in front of me.

That was until she turned into Keanu Reeves.

It a move we had all only ever seen in the Matrix trilogy, this girl simultaneously bent backwards and twisted to the side. I swear her hair brushed the ground. I guess there is something to be said for all the yoga those hippie girls do. The projectile in question sailed over her right hip and smacked on the ground at my feet. My second-hand Catholic guilt and neurosis automatically took over and I mindlessly scooped up the flowers so A) Hilary wouldn't be disappointed when she turned around and B) because you really shouldn't let nice things like that hit the ground. Thinking that all the symbolism and voodoo had been beaten out of it, I was surprised when I was met with hooting, hollering, and the mad flash of the photographer's camera in my face. I think I was too dazed to say anything but "It doesn't count right?" over and over again.

Note the Deer-in-the-Headlights expression