There are 143 posts filed in Reviews (this is page 10 of 15).
So I’ve got a few things going on between my home life, my work, and the various boards I serve on. I would never know where I was supposed to be without a decent calendar.
I’ve been using Google Calendar for most of my events and it works well for that. However, I want to keep a separate calendar for the East CAC that members can subscribe to. This can be done through the setting up of a CalDAV, ical, or WCAP-based calendar server.
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We enjoyed the Dan Zanes and Friends show at the North Carolina Museum of Art this evening. I’d been looking forward to it for so long (four years!) and Dan and the band didn’t disappoint. Their smiles becoming as infectious as the music.
Highlights were a cover of Wabash Cannonball, a whirling dervish end to The Monkey’s Wedding, and guest appearances by Raleigh’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Children’s Choir and the Durham Ukulele Jam Band.
Dan stayed after the show to sign autographs, which is very classy. But then again he’s just a great guy.
It was DZ and Friends’s first visit to the Triangle. We’re already looking forward to the next one!
Kelly and I had a chance to go on another date last night, so we went out to see the movie Moon (if you don’t mind spoilers, see the Wikipedia entry.). All the reviews were right: it was a very good movie. Actor Sam Rockwell had a huge burden, as he is the sole actor on screen for almost the entire film. He pulls it off, though.
We left the theater in time to head downtown to hear Zydecopious play at The Big Easy. We stayed out dancing past 1AM. Haven’t done that in a while!
While we were visiting Kelly’s parents in Virginia we decided to take a bike ride on Warrenton’s greenway path. At the start of the greenway is the Norfolk and Western Railway Caboose 518554, a restored caboose on freshly-laid track where thirty years ago freight trains once served the town. We happened to pass the caboose right as a gentleman appeared to be locking it up, so being the curious sort I asked him what he knew about the caboose.
It turns out the gentleman was Ron Scullin, one of the three main volunteers responsible for obtaining the track and caboose and restoring both to like-new condition. Ron had just finished up with tours of the caboose, which are held once a month, but hearing that we were from out of town, he graciously volunteered to provide a personal tour.
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Yesterday. I talked Kelly into seeing the new Star Trek movie with me so we ventured out to the movie theatre again for the first time in a long while. Happy to say we weren’t disappointed. There were a few things in the movie’s …. er, logic that left us scratching our heads and the fight scenes were confusingly hard to follow, overall it was a very entertaining flick.
Sunday’s Elvis Costello show at Cary’s Koka Booth Amphitheatre was civilized in every sense of the word. We drove right up, parked so close to the gates that we didn’t need a shuttle to reach them, waltzed through the security check collecting smiles as we went, and were comfortably settled on the lawn in no time. Our spot on the lawn had a great view of the stage, the sound was perfect – not too loud or soft, and decent food could be ordered ahead for pickup. The management even sent me a customer survey afterward to see how they did.
And you know what? I gave them marks that were off the charts! The facility runs circles around the Raleigh-owned dump with the pretentious name of Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek.
Cary does amphitheatres the way they should be done. Raleigh has a new standard to beat should it ever get its proposed downtown amphitheatre started.
Last Sunday the family and I enjoyed a day at the ballpark, watching the Carolina Mudcats demolish the Tennessee Smokies 10-2. It seemed like a very family-friendly place, right down to the Mudcats letting all the kids round the bases after the game.
It was almost perfect except for one tiny detail. You see, there are a lot of short breaks in baseball that are routinely filled by music played played by folks in the stadium sound booth. Most of these songs were familiar 80s hits that put a smile on my face but there was one particular rap song that played over and over, making me more annoyed every time I heard it.
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After we returned from the dinner party, we put the kids to bed and Kelly stayed put while I went out to join the Dolls and friends for a show by Zydecopious at the Blue Martini. I’m not used to heading out at 10PM but I soon caught up with the crew at the Peace Street R-Line stop and we rode the bus over to Glenwood South.
It didn’t take long for that zydeco music to get our feet moving! We took over the dance floor and had an amazing time! I got the chance to play tambourine on a few songs and even joined the band onstage to play the frottoir (the rubboard) on Mystery Train.
Hopefully there’ll be some pictures on the Zydecopious site that I can point to. In the meantime, make plans to see Zydecopious when they play at Seaboard Music June 12th. And bring your dancing shoes!
[Update: 9:37 PM] Here’s a link to the photos from the show.
We got back from Mordecai Historic Park’s Blast from the Past and had a terrific time! There were lots of kid-friendly things to do as well as lots of historic things to see. We watched as a team from a local antique automobile association put together a disassembled Model T in about than 8 minutes. We also watched a fashion show detailing the latest 19th century ladies fashions. We also got in a tour of the home and a tour of part of downtown Raleigh on the Mordecai trolley. It was a lot of tun!
I snuck out on my own Friday night and headed to Carrboro to see the Reverend Horton Heat (a.k.a. “Rev”) play the Cat’s Cradle. Boy was I not disappointed! It was almost the perfect show: tickets were just ten bucks, the opening act was entertaining, Cat’s Cradle is now smoke-free, the beer is reasonably-priced, and Rev. absolutely rocked the house. The only way it could’ve been improved was if Kelly could’ve been there, too, and the asinine mosh pit and the morons populating it had been somewhere else.
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