Ween, Live in Princeton

My wife and I went out to dinner last night. Chick-fil-a. Yum. We pull into our driveway around 7:00 PM. Darted into the house to check email.

Oh, what's this? Urgent message from my friend Sarah B?

Tonight, Wednesday---8pm
Princeton Community Park North
(Rt 206 at Mountain Ave)
Princeton, NJ
Admission - free!
From a myspace bulletin
For directions, please go to www.bluecurtain.org
For additional parking, please go to Ween.com and check the 'stickie' on the Ween Forum.

Stealth show-- only advertised to a small audience and word-of-mouth. I figure, "Oh well... looks like we missed out. We'll never get there in time" (even though Princeton is only 15 minutes away). By the time my mouth had wrapped itself around that final sentence, my wife had darted into the other room. In a matter of five minutes she was ready with keys in hand; we vamoosed with no time to waste

What a nice surprise.

Parking was absolute mayhem-- cars were parked, bumper-to-bumper, for a good mile south of the park. Fortunately the venue is smack dab in the middle of my 12-mile Sunday run, and I knew of an alternate parking lot. We pulled up on the other side. No problem, the lot was completely empty.

We strolled right through the park towards the summer stage. The "venue" was just a few rows of bleachers on the hillside and a concrete slab you might call a stage. No gates. No backstage. No security. This was the type of place you might expect to see Shakespeare in the park, or an afternoon show for the kids at Princeton Park North. Not quite the venue you might expect to see a popular alternative rock act.

The band started 20 minutes late and played a 100 minute set (my estimation). Had some soundboard difficulties early into the concert: low volume on mics, house right speakers kept cutting out, and a muddy mix. It took the stage crew far too long to work out all of these niggles; once they did, the sound was perfect for the rest of the evening.

By sundown the tiny venue was packed, the crowd was pumped, and Ween started playing into the audience's energy. The show was worth every penny (so to speak), and then some.

THE SET:
Fiesta
Don't Get To Close To My Fantasy
Mr. Would You Please Help My Pony
Gabrielle
Slow Down Boy
Bananas And Blow
Voodoo lady
The Party
Exactly Where I'm At
Back To Basom (PA kicked out...no vocals)
Buckingham Green
Stay Forever
Take Me Away
Touch My Tooter
Got To Put The Hammer Down
Wavin' My Dick In The Wind
Tick!
*It's Gonna Be A Long Night
*Polka Dot Tail
#*Ohio

ENCORE:
The Mollusk

*-With Rev B.Ill on Guitar
#-With Rev B.Ill On Backing Vocals

Tags: Princeton, Ween, concert

2007 Summer Insitute Writing Marathon

Today I joined a mini-writing marathon for the new fellows participating in the Invitational Summer Insitute hosted by the National Writing Project (NWP) at Rutgers University. The writing marathon is based on a journal exercise described by author Natalie Goldberg in her book Writing Down the Bones. In this book, Goldberg suggests how to approach the marathon:

Everyone in the group agrees to commit himself or herself for the full time. Then we make up a schedule. For example, a ten-minute writing session, another ten-minute session, a fifteen-minute session, two twenty-minute sessions, and then we finish with a half-hour round of writing. So for the first session, we all write for ten minutes and then go around the room and read what we’ve written with no comments by anyone. . . . A pause naturally happens after each reader, but we do not say “That was great” or even “I know what you mean.” There is no good or bad, no praise or criticism. We read what we have written and go on to the next person. . . . What usually happens is you stop thinking: you write; you become less and less self-conscious. Everyone is in the same boat, and because no comments are made, you feel freer and freer to write anything you want. (150)

The purpose of writing marathon mesh's with the NWP's main philosophy that teachers of writing should practice what they teach. The marathon offers a writing experience unfettered by genre, style, prompt, etc. It's actually quite relieving to get out of a computer lab or classroom and just write. Richard Louth describes how the marathon was put to use at their local NWP site in the article The New Orleans Writing Marathon. Louth gives additional advice:

• If you go into a restaurant or bar, be sure to order something.
• If anyone asks, tell them you are a writer.
• Keep in mind that you are doing this for yourself and for nobody else.

The design for the 2007 NWP Rutgers Invitational Summer Institute drew on these two sources. Older teacher consultants joined the new summer fellows, and naturally subdivided into groups of three to five participants. Each group was set free to roam the campus and surrounding areas, with an established rendezvous place and time.

My group set out from the Graduate School of Education, down Voorhees Mall, towards the Old Queens campus; our first stop was Kirkpatrick Chapel. We spent 15 minutes writing inside the chapel, and shared outside on the lawn. The group made way past the lawn, and directly to the train station across the street. We uncomfortably crammed into an elevator up to the train platform. It smelled of urine, baked by the summer's heat-- that made for good writing fodder. We only spent 10 minutes writing at the station, and then shared at Marita's Cantina over nachos (a marathon isn't complete without food and drink). Court's Tavern made for a good final stop on our writing marathon. We wrote for a full 30 minutes, and shared our writing over a beer.

2007wmisi tagged map - Tagzania

Kirkpatrick Chapel- 15 minutes

“What does it mean to have faith in God,” he asked, not expecting an answer in return. “The geographical history of the earth. Big bang. Continents shifting. Evolution. Movements of culture across continents, diverging and rejoining. Thanks to science and history, we already have the answers. There is no mystery anymore—just scientific proof.”

“I don’t know…” she started.

“Of course you don’t. Religion doesn’t prove something…”

“I don’t know. I mean to say, I want to believe in something more than here and now. I need to believe there is meaning in my life. That I was born for a reason, to serve a greater good. Your born. You live. You die. But what for? Religion gives me that answer. There is something beyond the scientific mechanics. There is beauty in what we don’t know.”

Train Station- 10 minutes

The subway station smelled of urinal cakes, smoldering cigarette butts, burnt coffee. Not the place you’d imagine for a romantic tryst. Dimly lit. The overhead fluorescent tubes flickered in and out of tempo. Water drip, drip, dripped deep within the bowels of the tunnel. But she insisted on meeting halfway. That was their relationship, always meeting halfway. The tunnel was alive with a beat of it’s own, so distant, yet unmistakable. Growing in timber, like a crescendo of timpani drums. His heart picked up. Rhythm, like the chugging sounds of the engine that would bring her back to him.

Court Tavern – 25 minutes

“Hey Jersey, you gonna ride?” That wasn’t a question. That was a statement veiled as a question, veiled as a test to my masculinity.

“What’s it to ya Texas?” I chided back.

At first, he rode the pause in conversation. Lingering long enough where I became slightly uncomfortable. Then he grinned at me with his eyes and slammed down a shot of whiskey.

“Do you have what it takes to prove that you have some nads city boy.” He spoke soft, yet firm. Overemphasizing city, like it was some kind of derogatory term. Maybe it was around these parts.

Dear God, it’s times like this I wish I was witty. I’m blessed to have a quick mind—though there isn’t any synaptic response between my thoughts and words. My tongue bumbled around with a few syllables. I stuttered, sucking down the air of silence. You know, someone should write a dictionary of wit-isms for times like this. A pocket reference for all the right things to say in times like this. That’s the moment I decided that actions must speak louder than words, and gave my nod to Texas.

“So, what’s it going to be,” he asked.

I pushed the stool outward, with the back of my legs, and stood from the bar. At first it took will to place one foot in front of the other. But something deep inside me disconnected from the situation. It was at that moment that I felt outside of myself, like I was watching a sitcom on TV where I also happened to be the main character of the episode. Something deep within me took over- I think they call it testosterone, and my body moved on autopilot.

Big Texas took pleasure at all of this, and guffawed as I made my way toward the mechanical bull. He shouted “Look at Jersey go!” in a sing-song sort of way. “Go Jersey go!” Cheering me onward, drawing a large audience to watch the debacle.

I’m Jersey. I’m suburban. I push a lawn mower for sport. What did I know about riding a mechanical bull? I knew well enough that I didn’t know. There was no faking experience or skill. I’d ride this blanged contraption out of sheer determination. That should show Big Texas I had the balls.

Tags: NWP, National Writing Project, Rutgers, writing marathon, creative writing, Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Childhood Memories of Summer

When I was a kid, no one in my family declined the invitation to take a car ride to get gas with my father. Particularly on a scorching day in late July or mid August.

Not then.

Not now.

Not ever.

We’d all pile into the family mobile, one by one. Dad. Mom. Brian. Little brother Mikey. Myself included. “Hail, hail! The gang’s all here,” or so my father would. It was he special way of saying everyone was included, from the chief straight on down through the file and ranks. I wonder if that was a quote from a movie or television show from his childhood long since past. The reference was lost on me. Despite that, it had a ring, like the bell to Pavlov’s dog.

I guess it was his catch phrase or something. He had quite a few of them, “Let’s get gas,” included.

The temperatures inside that vehicle could pull Hell to shame. I’m certain of that. The windows on that Chevy suburban didn’t exactly roll down. Rather they swung open, barely a few centimeters, on a hinge that was just as likely to pinch fingers as it was to mysteriously shut mid travel. My brother and I never bothered with the windows anyway. Too much trouble for too little travel. This created a wicked green house effect not even a tropical plant could endure.

Sweat cascaded down. Backs of legs were singed by pleather seats. We chocked on stale air. Who cared anyway. The sacrifice was well worth the immediate discomforts. After all, we were on a family outing to get gas.

The “gas station” (I guess that’s what you would call it in this context, though my father never used that word), was an ice cream shack off to the side of the highway. I never understood how my dad conjured the metaphor of gas equals ice cream. Probably some attempt at a corny joke. He was always cracking a pun or two any chance he could get. I guess this was opportunity to expand his repertoire of humorous expressions. No one dared question this comparison, especially not when ice cream was involved.

Like my dad’s jokes, the ice cream shack had a certain cheesiness about it. Classic hot rod cars and jeeps were parked around the perimeter. That might be pretty badass hadn’t the proprietors loaded these vehicles with oversized stuffed animals; the same ones you might expect not to win from the spin-the-wheel game at the Jersey boardwalk. Imagine a huge, plush Bugs Bunny driving a Mustang. The place was aptly named Campies.

The place was hokey to the max. Cheesy lawn ornaments, namely of the pink flamingo and garden gnome varieties. You could ride the mechanical pony for a quarter. Or, if that was to feminine, there was always the mechanical rocket ship for the more masculine. Their ice cream Sundays were named after popular TV shows. Note— the name had absolutely nothing to do with the actual flavor. Imagine walking up to the counter and ordering a “Bart Simpson,” or a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle”, “Fred Flintstone”, or “Al Bundy”.

I never ordered an Al Bundy… or a Quick Draw McGraw for that matter. Spiral upon spiral of soft ice cream was where it was at. My brothers and I would order the largest size offered off the menu, covered in sprinkles or coated with a candy shell.

Note—eating an ice cream cone of this magnitude required a fair amount of skill. Enough balance to prevent the cone from tipping over. Dexterity to lick the ice cream into shape, averting a dripping mess. And enough constitute to weather the occasional brain freeze. We had to finish the cone right there on the spot. To get back into the sweltering van would be sudden death. Game over.

Funny enough, for all the times we went out for “gas,” my dad never ate ice cream. He would just sit back on a fluorescent-colored park, smiling all the time. Satisfied. I suppose there are some things even better than ice cream. My father knew that way back when. Looking back over my childhood, I now know what he knew then.

Tags: Campies, Blackwood, NJ, ice cream, soft serve, summer, summertime, father, dad, memories