Radiohead in Charlotte, USA

I'm not certain I have a favorite band. There are several bands I really enjoy for different reasons. Back when Launch.com started back around the turn of the millennium I was working overnights for NBC NewsChannel. I spent hours listening to bands I sort of knew, and bands I didn't know at all. All I knew of Radiohead was that song Creep which I hated because the girl I was in love with in high school told me that was going to be she and her boyfriend's wedding song. She ended up marrying another guy by the way, and I don't think Creep was played at her wedding. Anyway, I heard a few Radiohead songs on launch and decided they didn't suck so off I went to Border's one night before work, picked up their 1995 album called The Bends and I listened to it, and only it for damn near six months. Of course, that burned me a bit on the band until 2003 when they released Hail to the Thief and I was in love all over again. I wore that CD out that summer in my 84 Volvo that had no breaks, but a great CD player. Anyway, Radiohead has always been one of my favorites. Perhaps my favorite.

I bought for tickets to see last week's show a few months ago. Shawn, Campbell and his pal Tracy joined me Friday night. Shawn and I grilled out and got there early for pre-show beer drinking. When I went beer shopping Friday afternoon I grabbed a 12 pack of High Life Light. I wasn't certain that'd be enough so I grabbed a six pack of Milwaukee's Best Ice. I HIGHLY recommend Beast Ice for pre-show drinking. It packs an alcohol volume of 5.9 percent and really jump starts a good show. Well, maybe it was the Stanly County shine we found in Shawn's van. It was definitely one of the two.

The show was great. Sure they played a bunch of slow songs, but it was Radiohead. They do that a lot and it wasn't unexpected. They played one song from The Bends in the first encore. Planet Telex whipped a ton of ass and despite all of the slow songs, Radiohead did, too.

Cleaned Up

I finally broke down and got a haircut last week. I enjoyed the long hair, but there were moments when the breeze hit right and I quickly became the weird looking dude with long hair and male pattern baldness. I remember one time in Vegas between convention halls the wind got a hold of it and it stood straight up for several seconds. I bet it looked real weird with a six inch piece of hair towering over an obvious receeding hairline so my pal Amy cut it off. More than I thought. Now I've the same haircut I've had for most of my life. I'm older though, so instead of looking like Doogie Howser, I look like Lane Kiffin.

Cleaning Out the Cell Phone Part Two

Broders and I went to Charleston last summer for the CNN YouTube democratic presidential debate. It was surprisingly easy and painless to cover despite the amount of press. I remember the food being really good, too. We talked to Anderson Cooper and he was actually a heck of a nice guy. I wasn't expecting him to be rude or anything, but he was very cool. So cool that a local reporter embarrassingly asked to take a picture with him after the interview. Weak.
Broders got somewhat excited when we saw Candy Crowley. I had never seen or heard of her until that night. That's how much CNN I watch. I'm a Fox guy for news and MSNBC for politics. CNN has never done it for me. I think I remember her being pretty nice, too.
Our Raleigh Sports Director Jim Connors came down for the ACC tourney in March. I was running audio for the show when I looked up during a package and realized the size difference between he and Solarte. All it took was a couple of director's chairs to make Solarte look more of a giant than he already is.

I had a pretty good view of the NCAA regional final in Detroit between Davidson and Kansas. I wasn't sure if I could take a picture or not so please excuse this poorly framed shot. If you look closely on the far left, you can see Stephen Curry.

Lots of racin' the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned...

Cleaning Out the Phone Part 1

I miss having Jason Bronis around the QC. I also miss his wonderful blog he shut down a year or so ago. My favorite feature of his was Cleaning out the Cell Phone pictures. I had two hours to kill whilst waiting for Michelle Obama Monday afternoon so instead of blogging about that event, I decided to clean out several of the hundred or so pictures I had in my phone. Thanks for the idea, Bronis. Holly at The Gin Mill got Travers, Mark Campbell and myself tickets to see The Flaming Lips. This was last fall sometime. September maybe? Hell, maybe even August. I'd only heard wonderful things about The Flaming Lips' live shows and I took the day off to make sure I got in. A cooler of Milwaukee's Best Ice and this yellow coozie were my best friend that afternoon. I got a pretty good spot in line and drank the aforementioned beverages while I waited for the doors to open.
The four of us(Kathy literally landed from Ireland an hour before the show) rolled inside and were handed laser pointers. As soon as the show started they released fifty or so of these big assed balloons for everyone to volley around for the duration of the show. This of course was accompanied by several dancers dressed up in Santa Claus suits, robot suits and even a few bunny suits if I remember correctly.
The laser show was nuts. Everyone in the crowd had their own to compliment the ones they had on the stage. The entire show whipped ass from start to finish. The band even blew their system before their final song so they had to finish up acoustically. It didn't matter. I left this show feeling great about life in general. Perhaps the best show I've ever seen. Definitely in my top three along with U2 in 2001, and The Drive-By Truckers with Slobberbone in 2000 at The Double Door.
Did I mention Jennifer and I went to New York City in December? We both enjoy the city and had never been at Christmas time so we rented an apartment on Craig's List and spent three days up there doing a shit ton of walking, bag shopping, eating and bar hopping. In fact, I bet we had 20 drinks while we were there and each one of them came from a different bar. We had a great time walking around looking at Christmas decorations. Above we're standing in front of Fox News Channel. Tim Baier's bro hooked us up with a tour. Unfortunately Shep was in makeup. The McGraw-Hill Building is to the left of my melon. It's the home of Sirius! We couldn't get in, though. I also bought this rather gay looking toboggan since I left mine at home. Feel free to leave toboggan comments in the comments section.
We did get into Crumb's Bakeshop, home of the Artie Lange cupcake. It only cost about 4 bucks and it's freaking enormous. Tasty, too. We had a blast in NYC. Everyone thought we were going to come back to Charlotte engaged.