Vote Early, Vote Often

My friend Zip's band, Sarah Benck and the Robbers, is in the running for a spot at this year's Lollapalooza! They entered the Last Band Standing Contest and made it through round 1 (top 100 bands by casted votes move on) and through round 2 (celebrity judges chose their favorite 20 bands) on to round 3, where they need to end up in the top 5 bands with the most votes cast. Those final 5 bands get to go to Chicago to compete live for 2 positions in the Lollapalooza show.

I've seen Sarah Benck and the Robbers (Zip is one of the robbers) perform several times at Lincoln's Zoo Bar. They're a tight group with a style that's a little hard to describe-it's a fusion of blues, rock, jazz, a little funk as well. Sarah has a heck of a voice, and she's a pretty good guitar player, too! They were just included in a writeup in Spin magazine about the Omaha music scene (see pg. 119) as well.

Here's a clip from YouTube, you can also learn more and listen to other tunes on their MySpace page:



So if you like what what you hear or you just want to do me a favor, cast your vote for Sarah Benck and the Robbers here. To prove you're real, they'll send you a follow-up link to click, so don't forget to do that part. You can vote once a day per e-mail account from now until July 13. Let's help put Sarah Benck and the Robbers on the national music scene!

I went on a gardening vacation, and all I got was rain

Well, half the week we had rain. I'm wrapping up my annual vacation week that's supposed to be dedicated to all things gardening, and while the beginning of the week was great, we've had rain 3 of the last 4 days. I did get 11 hand-grown tomato plants in the ground (3 better boys, 3 early girls, 2 brandywine, 2 black brandywine, and 1 jellybean) as well as a couple of bell pepper plants, bush bean seeds, onion sets, snap peas (I think it's too late for them, but Corrie wanted some peas) and also corn. (also not my idea but I was willing to give it a shot.)

It's a little difficult to see all of the tomato plants-Corrie installed cow fencing around most of them to serve as a really gigantic tomato cage.

When I couldn't garden, I did some minimal cleaning of the house and also worked on my Burnie fridgies. We also took Luther to his annual vet appointment which is no small undertaking, and we saw DeVotchKa in concert at the Slowdown in Omaha. It was a really good show, really nice club. There aren't many seats there, it's mostly set up for standing room, but we were lucky enough to get a high table in the balcony. (if you ever go and want a seat, get there really early!) I didn't take my camera because I get too distracted by it and forget to enjoy the live show, but there's one video on youtube right now of one of the last numbers. I'm not sure why they took the video from this angle rather than from a vertical perspective. You can't see us, but we were eye level with this woman at her highest point on the fabric.



I also finished watching season 1 of Flight of the Conchords. Thank you, Amy L. for introducing me to this show! I can't stop talking about how much I love it. The humor and songs are great! I think I might dress up as Mel, their lone fan, for Halloween this year. Unfortunately, I just figured out that they're performing in L.A. this Friday while I'm in town for BookExpo America, but their show is sold out! Maybe I'll run into them somewhere. I'm going to keep my eye out!

Lost Sweatshirt

In light of this week's high school boys basketball tournament and with the possibility that my alma mater, Omaha Central High, could be competing for their third straight championship and continue to simultaneously hold titles in football, basketball and track (yes, I'm annoyingly still proud of my high school. If you went there, you'd understand) I decided I'd try to once again find my comfy grey school sweatshirt that wouldn't be too obnoxious to wear to the games. (It's very simple, only lettering, no graduation years mentioned. Timeless fashion.) I realize now that I have many totes of old clothes stored in our basement, however, I didn't quickly find that sweatshirt. Of course, I found a few other things that had to be drug out of the basement, inspected by the cats and me, and photographed.

1. my Husker scrapbook from the 1987-88 season. There are no fancy football stickers purchased from Hobby Lobby's scrapbooking section, just roughly-cut stories and photos from the Sunday edition of the Omaha World Herald.

















2. my 1990 Earth Day t-shirt. I was in the middle of an environmentally-conscious phase back then. I was a vegetarian for a whole week once. I even found a kindred spirit with the same shirt at that summer's music camp. The shirt is a *little* faded now.





















3. my 1992 U2 Zoo Tv Tour t-shirt. Seems like just yesterday we were on the eve of electing Clinton to the White House. I had missed their show in Ames, IA that fall because of marching band duties at the high school football game, but I somehow begged and pleaded my way into getting to see them in Kansas City a month later. It was great-I think it was my first experience being around really drunk people, which was not so great. The shirt got a lot of wear-it too is faded and oddly shaped now.

















4. my college band jacket. In one pocket, there were a couple of peppermints, still in tact in their wrappers, the combination to a residence hall mailbox, and an empty clarinet reed case. In the other pocket, and I don't know why this was there, was one of Corrie's socks. No clue. I tried to collect pins for the front from all the places the band took me, but along the way I believe I lost my Kansas Jayhawk pin and maybe a Cyclone pin. The collars on these jackets were dreadful-Corrie has a jacket from the year before with a normal collar.

















5. Finally, there's a happy ending. I did find my senior class t-shirt! "U Can't Hold Us"-were we rebels or something? Had someone threatened to hold the whole class back? Unfortunately, I think it's too silly to wear to the game.

A Busy Thursday

I think I had the busiest, most varied Thursday in a long time yesterday. After working almost a normal length workday, I hustled over the courthouse to be a witness at my friend's wedding. Luckily, courtroom weddings don't last very long, so we were in and out of there in less than an hour. (Would've been less time than that if they actually honored the appointment times they set up in advance. It appeared that the groups with the most children running around the courthouse got in first. Four normal-acting adults were going to be last, I could tell.)

Then Corrie and I were on the road to the Foo Fighters concert at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. Even Council Bluffs does a better job of handling large events than Lincoln does-the Mid-America Center has plenty of FREE parking right by the building. The security check was light-no heavy groping like at the TOOL and Nine Inch Nails shows we usually go to. (also no lines in the women's restrooms, but I think there were lines in the men's-that's not something you witness everyday.) I was a little afraid this show would be a little fluffy compared to someone like TOOL, but it was very good. I'll make this brief and to the point-I liked the whole show. I was pleased with the opening band, Against Me-they had a little bit of an old school punk rock sound. Then there was Serj Tankian, who is an extraordinary performer, and I admit I was probably looking more forward to seeing him than seeing Foo Fighters. While I'm glad that the Foo Fighters have had the success that they've had, I really wish their songs haven't been overplayed on the radio for the last 10 years. They really do put on a good show, though, including a long acoustic set that was performed from a 2nd stage at the back of the arena, very close to our seats!

Unfortunately, the headache I felt coming on earlier in the day turned into a doozy during the show, even though I drank some water, had no beer, only inhaled second-hand smoke from various sources, and wore my ear plugs. (By the way, I highly recommend ear plugs for concerts-they make it sound so much cleaner, and you can actually still hear after the show.) I was hoping we could visit a casino after the show, since we were in Iowa and all, and they're right there, but my head was almost hurting too much to go. I kept thinking the headache would surely go away, so I convinced Corrie to stop at Ameristar. I think I was hoping I'd hit it big on the quarter slots, and THAT would make my headache go away. Alas, there was no hitting it big for me. So we left the dinging bells and smoky air and headed back to Lincoln around midnight. The headache didn't go away until many advil and a good night's sleep, and even today I feel a little weird.

In the middle of my busy Thursday, I also got my bike tuned up at the Monkey Wrench Cycles downtown. I'm really pleased with their work, check them out if you are ever in need of their services.