Pelanne.Com

Finally. Finally! I have finally tracked down the very first Phish set I ever attended. And it’s a soundboard!

It was mid-summer in 1992, and I was in New Jersey of all places - attending the HORDE festival with the roommate of my roommates’ girlfriend (confusing enough?), a student at Rutgers who ran her own radio show of eclectic tunage, liked to write about music, and most importantly, had a car.

The HORDE festival was an 8 hour beast of a concert that took place for a few years before fading away in the mid-nineties. Early incarnations of the festival featured a great lineup of bands: Blue Traveler, Spin Doctors, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Phish and Widespread Panic - bands that were just at the end of the club circuit, but were too small to sell out large ampitheaters by themselves. With these bands came the standard heady mix of sold-from-a-blanket merchandise, grilled cheese and falafel vendors, petitions for good causes, and cold beers sold by enthusiastic 16-year olds hoping to pave their way through an entire tour.

I was there to see the Spin Doctors and Widespread Panic. This of course was before Two Princes was turned into a never-ending pop loop of death (Panic, however, has remained an excellent band in its own right).

The Spin Doctors had just finished their set in the late afternoon when I noticed that the crowd, which had been obediently dancing at their seats until that time, had begun a slow mill stageward, much to the chagrin of the security personnel. In space of five minutes, the throng had turned into an unbroken sea of colorful people stretching a third of the way back into the ampitheater.

I also noticed at this time that the number of balloons, beach balls and other miscellaneous inflatable objects bouncing above the crowd had about quadrupled in a moments time. That, and that people seemed to be very excited, even with the simple appearance of the drum tech popping onto the stage to make last minute adjustments.

I since have learned that a good litmus test for the quality of a band is if their road crew is cheered enthusiastically, and have myself cheered many a drum tech.

The crowd literally erupted at the sight of four slightly disheveled musicians making their way onto the stage.

Ah, this is the Vermont quartet I keep reading about in Relix…

Seconds later, lights. Lots of them, and in a ridiculous splash of color, even in the waning afternoon sun…and then - the opening piano notes of The Landlady, an energetic piece fueled by calypso-tinged piano and guitar. This was followed by Runaway Jim, the story of a canine with wanderlust, which would grow to be one my favorites in their repertoire….

…and the set continued.

Added to the mix that evening was the musical cat-and-mouse pursuit of Foam, a dense, tension-and-release riddled Stash, and a double helping of You Enjoy Myself.

It was music that I could literally chew on, and by the end of the night, I had forgotten about the other sets - I was hooked for the next 12 years.

If you want to listen to the rest of my first set, see below - it takes about an hour in total:

So, off I trudged into the world of online video in search of something enlightening, something different, which might make you forget to take a breath and a half or so.

I wanted to surprise and delight with unexpected wisdom or insight that I could pass off as my own.

Instead, I came back from my mission of forage with the most ridiculously cute kitten this side of the New Year. So, pull up a chair, pour yourself a nice glass of whole milk, and enjoy…you will regain at least three once-lost levels of innocence.

The one thing everyone buys Q-Tips for - cleaning your ears.

The one thing Q-Tips plead with you to not use their product for - cleaning your ears.

They are extremely happy to have you utilize their product for every other purpose except for that. That’s what the box says.

Does that sound like the result of selling a product in a litigous environment? Does it seem as though it may have been brought to you by the same people who applied warnings to your coffee sleeve and who remind you how to operate a seatbelt pre-flight?

I did find some loopholes that they should be aware of, however.

It seems to me that they could add an additional warning on the package informing people that they cannot be held liable for someone losing their house and posessions because they foolishly tried to extinguish a burgeoning grease fire in their kitchen with a Q-tip. It could happen. I know people whom I can vividly picture pursuing this strategy.

Additionally, they could also point out to equal effect that their product is somewhat ineffective against rampaging yaks and other beasts of the field, and that it is an entirely undependable implement for fending off an angry and slightly aroused silverback.

As a matter of fact, it has been definitively proven under controlled laboratory conditions that most simeans are apt to become highly enraged at the sight of a brandished twist of paper tipped with cotton tufts.

I’m just sayin’.

On the tail end of a communications workshop in Austin, I found myself in a restaurant trying to explain the strange implications of the double-slit experiment, which is essentially the basis of quantum physics, to a co-worker.

Unfortunately, years of not directly exercising my degree had taken their toll, and my expounding took on a wandering and somewhat confusing quality. Pints of dark Texan beer and a well-maintained lack of sleep didn’t help either.

As the more active and sporting-enthusiast physicists are wont to say, the quantum skier weaves to the left AND to the right of the tree. The more sedentary physicists will fall back to noting that when firing particles at a double-slitted barrier, the particles will travel through both slits and each slit and no slits, all at once.

Until you observe the individual particles.

When you do that, the skier actually picks his side of the tree and leaves only one set of tracks, and and the particle choses a single path. It’s really quite weird, and the math behind it will bald you early.

So, if you have five minutes or so, here’s a fantastic explanation of the dual nature of matter at the quantum level - how it acts as both a particle AND a wave. The video also illustrates the indisputable fact that everything is easier to understand when it’s explained to you by a cartoon.

Absolutely awesome.

Take 3rd gravitating bodies, yellow cars, disparaged parrots, broad strokes of monet, incisive hemmingway wisdom, a dash of sarcasm, a dose of well-thought human observation, a sprinkling of personality type theory, lots of obscenely creative and certifiably crazy people, and a load of beer.

Shake thoroughly, preferably with ice.

Bake at one hundred and three degrees in the Texas sun, for three days. Allow to rest under foil for ten minutes.

That’s Magical Worlds at Wizard Academy.

Not many people realize this, but I never had to attend an educational institution of any kind. No home-schooling was endured, no college attendance was required, and no online technical institute fees were coerced out of my wallet.

The simple fact of the matter is that I have learned everything I know about everything through the judicious use of my diabolical mind-meld brain-sucking ability. I like to think of it as an active and somewhat terrifying use of osmosis.

This was brought to sharp focus for my coworker Jim today - below is the only known photographic rendering of the knowledge transfer process.

Suffice it to say that he was a drooling mess afterwards, and I that I now know significantly more about musical theory and the practical application of cascading stylesheets.

Ok - today was a good day for really cool things. First there was the ukelele dude who could shred like it was no one’s business. Now, there is a bar (read - whiskey on the rocks, and make it quick) which is pretty darn amazing.

This is too cool. Just watch.

Just came back from an excellent trip to France - covering both Paris in the north and the surfing town of Biarritz, in the southwest of France.

Before the trip, we felt like we did our due diligence, but of course, there are a few things that nailed us anyways. We also got to observe lots of other tourists in their natural habitat and got to learn vicariously that way…so here are a few points to keep in mind if you’re heading over there!

1) Have some cash on you for your cabs (read: cab from airport), mass transit, and snacking needs, but don’t worry about getting Euros from your bank before you go. Get them instead at the currency exchange in the airport you’re flying out of. You’ll get comparable rates with less fees because they don’t have to ship the money to your bank. Exchange enough money (about $400), and they waive even those fees.

2) Gather coin change - one and two Euro coins - you’ll need it for parking meters, hotel tipping, pourboires, and more. I’d actually go in with about 10 euros in coin.

3) Get a phone card so you can make local calls if you have to when you’re out of the hotel - you can get a telecarte at any tabac (essentially a convenience store) or train station (during regular hours). They’re about 7 and a half euros for an hour of local calls. We were up a particular creek when we found ourselves needing to call Eurocar to pick us up at the train station and none of the phones wanted to let us. The phones don’t take coin and while they can take credit cards, it won’t work for calling locations local to your phone - we tried! Another option is getting a disposable phone - 60 - 80 euros will get you a phone and a number and some minutes. Then you don’t need to seek public phones!

4) Especially in Paris, get dinner after eight o’clock. Nine and ten is good - we even saw people coming in at 11 PM for dinner. At 5 and 6, people are much more likely to be getting a coke or a coffee.

6) When dining out, you’ve got to ask for “l’addition” or you will never get a check. I really like this, because it gets rid of the “get ‘em in and get ‘em out” phenomenon you see here in the US.

7) The more you are paying, the more attentive your waiter will be. That’s just the way it is! Small sidewalk cafes will get swift and businesslike service - gastronomic dinners will have waiters falling over themselves to keep your wine glass full and push your chair in. Just remember that businesslike != rude and don’t take it personally!

Even if you don’t speak french, learn the basic terms - please, thank you, hello, goodbye. You’re much less likely to get the “treatment” that people complain about if you just open with a little french.

9) When you enter a shop, greet the proprietor, and when you leave, say goodbye, unless it’s like, the Eiffel tower or something. We went into one shop in which the proprietor was on the phone. The place was packed, and after she got off the phone, she essentially did a mass greeting to everyone in the store, to which everyone replied in kind and in unison, like a schoolroom. It was cool.

10) Lots of things are closed between noon and three. You will get used to walking up to places and finding them closed.

11) Most dinners begin with an apertif, so have a drink in mind when you sit down. My constant fallback was a beer, or if it was a nice place, a coupe de champagne. We saw lots of deer-in-headlight looks when people were seated and the were immediately asked what they wanted (which is strange, because that’s pretty much happens here in the states too).

12) If you want water with your meal, you need to order a bottle - avec gaz or plat (carbonated or flat). Very rarely will you find complementary water, and never will you find ice in it.

12) Public restrooms are few and far in between, and you often have to pay a euro to use them If you find one that you don’t have to pay at, you will rapidly understand that the money at the paid restrooms goes into cleaning them.

13) Have lots of fun! Don’t be intimidated by these points - they’re not hard fast rules, just “good to knows”. You can get by just fine without knowing them, and by the end of the day, you’d be able to write the same list. Plus, you will have eaten three fantastic meals and probably have taken in a nice dose of old-school European culture (there are not many ills that staring at impressionist paintings for an afternoon cannot cure or at least alleviate).