Today is an important day for two reasons:

1. It’s votin’ time
2. It’s also business time

Yep, the primaries for PA are today, but way more important than that, today is the release day for the full Flight of the Conchords album.

I just discovered the Zune Card thing that’s offered to those of us who decided against iPods.  I guess they didn’t learn anything from the 360 gamer cards which caught on because they were easily embedded.

But if you click now, you’ll see the last song I listened to was by ABBA.

Went to see They Might Be Giants at the State Theatre last night. Damn fine show, and it made me realize that they’ve released way too much music over the years. Brandy had her wishes fulfilled by a play of “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, but I walked away empty handed, wanting desperately to hear “Don’t Let’s Start”, which remains my favorite for nostalgia and guitar pantomime reasons.

The surprise of the night was definitely when they kicked into one of their kids songs, though they definitely don’t scream “The Fucking Alphabet of Nations!!” on the CD. Even if they did, we’d probably still let Gareth listen to it. When it started, Brandy and I turned to each other and pretty much jumped up and down. I almost, almost dual-high fived her. Luckily, I reigned it in. I would have never lived that down as I am not a fan of the high five.

Oppenheimer opened for them, and I was pretty quickly hooked. The only reason I didn’t walk out with a CD is that I didn’t have any cash on me, but it is readily available at places like CD Universe (or download the album for less then $2 at legalsounds).

In the 7th grade, I journeyed to New York city as part of a drama club field trip during which I got to see the sights and hear the sounds of the classic metropolis. Never had I returned until Friday, 8/3, when Brandy and I traveled to NYC for her anniversary present - to see The Police in concert at Madison Square Garden.

Until now, I’ve never known my own capacity for cutting off people in traffic. After sitting still for nearly one hour, my instincts in assholery kicked into high gear, enabling me to move across four lanes of traffic in a single diagonal. What glory!

The morning started off not so well. My car was leaking oil, so I hurried it in to the local Honda dealership for an assessment. Luckily, it was just a bad oil filter and gasket, so they got that replaced and sent me on my way - but still an hour later than we anticipated. Then we hit two really bad patches of construction on I-80, each one adding nearly an hour from our travel time. After that came the bad directions from Yahoo! that ended up putting us in circles in Newark. We got that figured out and made it through the Lincoln Tunnel only to be brought to a very long halt on Dyer and 42nd (yeah, made a wrong turn coming out of the tunnel). By the time we made it to our hotel, the three hours we had hoped to have for general tourism had vanished, leaving us just enough time to walk around the block and have a quick meal at Chipotle. It did not live up to our ideals for the trip, though we still had fun.

But then we got to the Garden, found our floor seats, and sat back for an hour of opening act and over two hours of standing once The Police took the stage. Women really like Sting. I’m not sure they knew who the other two guys were, which was okay, since Sting was the only one of the three to exude anything approaching enthusiasm. It was easy to see which of the three had been consistently performing over the past 20 years.

The concert was great, very lively, mixed well. The Garden is a great place for a concert if you have decent seats.

Afterwards, we crashed at the hotel, slept in together for the first time in a year, and had breakfast at Lindy’s before getting back in the car and heading home.

Now that I’ve experienced NYC as an adult, I have fewer misgivings about visiting it for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, both seasonal events in which Brandy has wanted to partake. We just have to prep Gareth for a four hour car ride.

Oh, side note.  That photo up there isn’t mine.  In order to maximize time spent with my wife and not my viewfinder, I elected to leave my camera at home.  It was a much appreciated gesture as I’ve been known to sully experiences by, say, keeping my hand on the camera instead of holding the hand of my wife.

What an interesting evening! I’m pretty much the only person on the face of the planet who has never listened to a Beatles album. Sure, I’ve heard singles all over the place, but I’ve never experienced the discography. To say that I was a bit out of my element attending a Beatles cover band concert would be to engage in the wonderful practice of understatement.

Brandy, Gareth, and I met up with a few other people for dinner at Baby’s before heading over to the State College central parklet for a free concert by The Cast of Beatlemania (The Cast, for short).

We got there an hour in advance and found very little seating space remaining. As a result, we spread our blanket right in front of the left stack of speakers. We were about 10 feet away from them, and they were loud. So loud, in fact, that my left ear started experiencing massive pain, forcing me to get up and walk away for a bit until my hearing returned. While I awaited that, I walked to the grocery on Allen and picked up a bag of cotton balls. That did the trick. I was able to enjoy the rest of the concert without pain.

Poor Brandy hasn’t figured out yet that I don’t smile or dance or move or otherwise indicate when I’m enjoying a concert. To be honest, I wasn’t really into the first half because of the music. Once they got into the second half, the Sgt. Pepper/psychedelic period, I was much more into the performance. All told, I did really enjoy the concert and thought the band did a great job. My opinion is relatively uninformed, though, because of my lack of prior concentrated Beatles exposure.

My camera got quite the workout, though only a handful of the shots are presentable . But wait, there’s more! I don’t usually remember that my camera can record video. Tonight, I remembered. So for your viewing enjoyment, assuming your employer has not blocked YouTube, which mine has, here are The Cast of Beatlemania performing some song I don’t know:

I picked up a Zune today, even though I received a perfectly good iPod mere days ago.

Too tired to write a full comparison, but iTunes wants $1 a song, Zune has Zune Pass (which is fantastically awesome) and lets me download all I can stand for $15 a month. Zune is bulky and vibrates when the HD kicks in, iPod is slim and quiet.

Zune let me put ATHF as a background image. iPod lets me play Breakout (Bricks) with the click wheel.

I much prefer the interface of the Zune. I feel as though I’m getting to my files faster. Though it’s hard to not have the click wheel once you’ve slid your thumb around it a few times.

Since our morning is going to be consumed by Gareth’s gifts and the arrival of my family for breakfast, Brandy and I exchanged our gifts this evening. Here is the haul:

• Pink Floyd The Wall, CD and DVD
• Call of Duty 3 for Xbox 360
• Monty Python desk calendar
• Battle for Middle-Earth II Rise of the Witch-King expansion pack
• NRS kayak paddle leash
• NRS Farmer John wetsuit

I was really gunning for that last one. It’s the thing that will make cold weather kayaking feasible. Yep, I tried it on. If you can imagine a black Michelin Man, then you’re pretty close to knowing what it looked like.