More U2 at Gopher Stadium

K.O. and I had field seats. Here is the massive stage as you Walk On (Get it the song?) to the field.About half way through the concert I had to use the bathroom and I can't believe what I saw. These two girls sitting down and reading books. Let me know the next time that happens when U2 plays Camp Randall. I seriously thought hell had froze over when I saw this.How about the setlist? Here is it:

Even Better Than the Real Thing

The Fly

Mysterious Ways - Rain

Until the End of the World - Anthem

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

I Still Haven't Found

Stand By Me

Stuck in a Moment

Beautiful Day - Space Oddity

Can't Stand the Rain - Elevation

Pride

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City of Blinding Lights - Singing in the Rain

Vertigo

Miss You-I'll Go Crazy (remix)-Raindrops Keep Falling-Discotheque-Life During Wartime-Psycho Killer

Please - Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On

Encore: One - Purple Rain

Hallelujah - Purple Rain - Where the Streets Have No Name - Singing in the Rain

Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

With or Without You

Moment of Surrender - Singing in the Rain

It was pretty hot out that day/night. And early on into the show it started raining. I had no problem with that. It felt great as hot as it was. At times it got to be a pretty serious rain storm. There was a little bit of thunder and lightening. I remember telling people how cool it would be if Bono got struck by lightening. They looked at my like I was crazy. But it would be like being Abraham Zapruder. I was asked after the show how I would rate this concert. I have seen U2 7 or 8 times and I can't rank it any higher than 4th. My top 2 were the 2 shows at the Bradley Center where I had floor seats and was really close to the stage. And then the Camp Randall show from the Zooropa tour with the Big Lemon. I thought the last song was a poor choice. I had heard that at past shows they played "One Tree Hill", I would have also liked to have seen "Red Hill Mining Town" or "Running to Stand Still" . I also felt a little cheated that I didn't get the "Yeah we will shine like stars in the summer night, we'll shine like stars in the winter" coda. Here I am with my friend, Nichole, who I met at the show.

I didn't get too many decent pictures of the band on stage. I would guess we were 20 to 25 yards from the stage.Here is K.O. after the show as we were waiting for Flo to come and pick us up after the show.

Kind of a funny side note to the whole weekend. The vast majority of my Minnesota friends I met through Krum. And in reading the last couple of posts, you know that I had a busy weekend. I knew I was staying with Borky one night and K.O. and Troup the next, so I wasn't really going to have time to meet up with Krum. We did exchange some text messages before the show but never met up. As K.O. and I are walking out of the stadium with 58,000 other people who do I run into....Krum. The first thing he says to me in a joking manner "Hey buddy, thanks for letting me know that you were coming to town. I had to find out from Troup last night." Sorry Krum, next time I will work some time in for you. I will be back in the Twin Cities for the Badger - Gopher game. This is some video of "Pride".

Of all of the concerts I have been to, this was the most rain I have ever had to endure. Rage Against the Machine at Alpine Valley had quite a bit of rain, but I had covered seats, check that, I had lawn seats but made my way into the reserve / covered seats. And here is some more so you can appreciate how hard it was raining.

U2 at Gopher Stadium

Saturday was the big U2 show. Walking around the stadium before hand there certainly was an electricity in the air. Although I will say that it was a much older crowd than I expected. I don't think that today's kids listen to too much U2. The forecast for the evening called for rain. I like to get a gage on people's expectations of the show. I like to poll people and ask them what is the one song that they really want to hear that night. This is also a good way to separate the die hard fans from the band wagon jumpers. But on this night my first question was "Did you bring a rain coat?" Easily 75 percent of those polled had rain gear. That really surprised me. I went to the concert with my friend, K.O. We started at Sally's, but then walked over to BW3's were a group of about 12 of our friends were pre-partying. Here is Borky, K.O., Schoen and myself.Borky and I after leaving BW3's and getting ready to head in to the show.It is always a good thing when you have a Moose sighting. Mary Moose came down to enjoy in the pre concert festivities. He was going to try and scalp a ticket, but I doubt that he got in. Borky, K.O., me, Schoen and Marty Moose.K.O. and MartyK.O. with the huge stage in the background.

Here is the opening song: Even Better Than the Real Thing

How To Start A Fire

When we got back to Borky's after the game Schoen showed me how to get a fire started.

Harmon Killebrew

Harmon Killebrew smacking me in the face.

Twins Game

I was in Minnesota this past weekend. Friday night I went to the Twins baseball game with Borky, Schoen and KMart. Here is Schoen, Borky and Liz.I got to the ball park and got a picture with the Kriby Puckett statue.Here is the view from our seats. It really is a beautiful ball park. Although I didn't see the retractable roof. There might be a couple cold games here and there. It kind of makes those of us in Milwaukee look like wusses. But I would rather be a warm wuss than a cold tough guy.We weren't in our seats very long. I think it was only an inning or two. We spent the rest of the game at the Captains deck which is a bar that overlooks the field from the left field corner. Here I am with Borky.

Festa Fireworks

I know everyone likes my pictures of fireworks. So here are some I took last Thursday on the opening night of Festa Italiana.I biked down to the lake front for the fireworks. On the way back I stopped and grabbed this which is kind of a cool picture of the bridge between Canal Street and the Hank Aaron State Trail

Twins and U2

Well suckers, have fun this weekend. I am headed up to the land of no beer. Minnesota. Friday night I am going to the Twins game with Borky (Pop Up Video). We don't have tickets yet. But from a look at the standings, I doubt we will be shut out of tickets. And Saturday night I am going to Gopher Stadium to see U2 with my friend, K.O. I am excited, but cautious. The last time I saw U2 in Minnesota they played Vertigo twice. Message to Bono, "You have a rather large catalog of songs, How about playing One Tree Hill, Mothers of the Disappeared or Electric Co instead of Vertigo again?"

Next Gyro Contest

I was on the East Side this weekend. And as always, if I am in the area I stop at Oakland Gyros. I would say the food is so good there, but to be honest I have never had anything there other than a gyro. If you are a loyal blog reader, you know that from time to time I have contests on my blog and the prize is almost always an Oakland Gyro with an extra pita and lare rootbeer. As I was feeding my face with my gyro, I couldn't believe that of all the gyro contests I have had, at least 10, to my recollection, no one other than Julie has cashed in on there gyro. Since no one really claims there prize for the Oakland Gyro, I thought I would throw in another contest. What difference does it make, no one will claim the prize anyhow. So here is today's contest, and the first person to answer will win an Oakland Gyro with an extra pita and lare rootbeer, What color is my black truck? Here is a picture to help you figure it out.

Brats and Buns

Monday night I grilled up a package of the greatest brats ever produced, my dad's own pizza brats. But as I had them on the grill it got me to thinking. There are 6 brats in the package but 8 hot dog buns in a package. Is it really that hard to have the same number of brats as buns? Or look at hot dogs, 10 in a package. What kind of a world do we live in where this is taken to be normal?Now obviously I would like to see a college football playoff in place before the 6 brats vs 8 buns is settled. But this is number 2. Although I have already discussed this with my mom, and I have a feeling next year for my birthday I am going to get a couple of packages of pizza brats with 8 brats in each package.

The Bar Has Been Raised

The bar has been raised for my house guests. I have had a number of guests to stay at my house so far this year, but none that have brought home the hardware like this. This past week my friends, Tiffany, Nicki, Jenna and Steve stayed with me. The reason, the International Cycling Classic. A series of bike races in Wisconsin and Illinois. Tiffany and Nicki participated in the Women's Professional category. And I am happy to announce that following their final race they walked away with the two top prizes in the event. Nicki won the overall race series. She had the Yellow Jersey from race one. In fact she won the first two races outright and then continued to pile up over points over the next 7 races. It also makes the 3rd straight year she has won the overall title in the International Cycling Classic. Not to be out done, Tiffany won the Sprint series (Red Jersey). Just like Nicki, Tiffany got out to a quick start winning 5 of the 6 first Sprint Laps in the 1st two races, and wore the Red Jersey from race number one through race number 9. Tiffany even capped off the event by taking first place in the final race on Sunday. Congratulations girls and I hope you come back next year.

These pictures were from the Brookfield Race.
Tiff coming to the finish line in one of the sprint laps.Nicki coming to the finish line at the end of the race.A familiar sight, Nicki on the podium with the Yellow Jersey and the Race SponsorsAnd Tiff up on the podium sporting her Red Jersey.

DMB Night 3; Part 2

Now the pictures, setlist and the video are only half of the story. For the Sunday show, it was just The General and I. Liquid and Myra went back to Minnesota on Sunday morning. So it was just the two bulls. Once the concert started The General and I sort of got separated. This left me with all of the alcohol that I smuggled in, and of course I drank it all. My cell phone battery also died over the course of the concert. I will credit our disconnect to miscommunication and alcohol. After the show, I made my way back to the parking lot, but couldn't find The General's car. And by the time I got back to the parking lot it was pretty empty but I did not see his car. So I didn't have a lot of options. I would have called him but as I mentioned my cell phone battery was dead. I headed back towards the concert venue and found my way to the shuttles that went back and forth between the concert venue and the CTA Red Line. I was on the last shuttle heading towards the red line. When I got on the red line, I was pretty much the only one in my car. I got off the red line in downtown Chicago. So I was out of the "Cracktown" neighborhood that hosted the concert, but I was still stuck in downtown Chicago at 2 in the morning with a dead cell phone, an empty backpack, my wallet and the clothes on my back. I went over my options. There really weren't too many. I grabbed a cab to a hotel near Union Station and went straight to bed. I was up and out of the hotel by 7 in the morning. I paid nearly $25 an hour to sleep in a bed. I got an Amtrak ticket to Milwaukee and boarded the train at 8:00 a.m. It wasn't ideal, but I was headed back home. That was until the train was about 45 minutes outside of Chicago and I learned that the storm that blew through Monday morning had knocked down trees and power lines onto the train tracks. The train stopped for 3 hours waiting for the tracks to be cleared. And once we started moving again, it was at about 25 miles an hour because there was concern that there maybe other obstacles in the way. My train which was scheduled to pull into Milwaukee at 10:00 a.m. reached the station at 3:00 p.m. I think it is time that I start cleaning up my act because I have been to hell and I don't want to spend eternity there. Hell is extremely hungover on a stopped train with the sun beating down on your through the window. Originally I had placed much of the blame of my misadventures on The General, but the more that I have been able to reflect on the events of Sunday evening, the more I realize it was more my fault than his. Between the shuttle, red line, cab rides, hotel, train ticket; my inability to find The General after the concert cost me over $200. Now the question is, "Have I learned anything?" Time will tell, I am headed to see U2 this coming Friday in Minneapolis. And Labor Day weekend is two nights with Pearl Jam at Alpine Valley. Stay tuned.

DMB Night 3

And so we get to the last night of the stay in Chicago. Here is the view from out hotel balcony.The Willis TowerThis was after a quick stop at the bathroom and making my way back to the main stage about 20 minutes before DMB took the stage. The place was being dive bombed by flying rats.Dave and Co take the stage. I think the 3 night I was the closest of all three shows.Here is something I have never seen at a DMB show, a guy with no hands taking a picture.

Here was night 3's setlist, and if you go through my previous postings, you will see, not a single song repeated, including the afternoon set of just Dave and Tim.

One Sweet World

Bartender

Say Goodbye

Best of What's Around

Captain

Shotgun

Warehouse

Spaceman

Seek Up

When The World Ends

Rhyme and Reason

Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith Cover)

The Idea of You

Buena

Gravedigger

Can't Stop

Watchtower

Encore:

Some Devil

Sister

Ants Marching

Thank You

Video of Watchtower

Video of Thank You

DMB Night 2

The venue for the concerts was south west of downtown Chicago. It was about a 20 - 30 minute cab ride. Here our cab driver on night 2 drinking beer with us. Good ideas....we were full of them all weekend.We got down to the show earlier on day 2 because Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds were doing a small two man set in the middle of the day. We showed up for the last 3 songs and were so far away you could barely make out what the songs were. But for those interested here was that setlist:

Save Me

Where Are You Going

So Damn Lucky

Oh

Eh Hee

Old Dirt Hill

Tim Solo

Grace is Gone

Blue Water Baboon Farm

Dancing Nancies

Here are two guys who couldn't deal with the heat, or maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was both. First the guy in the white shirt went down.
5 seconds later, pink shorts went down. If you ask me that is what you get for wearing pink shorts.We got a much better vantage point for night two.This picture was taken about 10 seconds before this pretty little thing passed out and went limp. She had to be throw over her boyfriend's shoulder and carried out. But there was one that topped that. Maybe 15 minutes later I saw two girls carrying a guy out. In my opinion, Saturday was the best show. Here is the setlist:

#41

Seven

Burning Down the House

Break Free

Why I Am

Proudest Monkey

Satellite

Blackjack

Crush

Granny

Lying In The Hands of God

Alligator Pie

Lie In Our Graves

Too Much

Crash Into Me

Grey Street

Encore:

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Time Bomb

Two Step
Here is video of Crush

Lie In Our Graves

DMB Night 1

I was down in Chicago this past weekend for 3 Dave Matthews Band Concerts. Here is night one. We didn't get a very good location for the show. It was a General Admission show. But here was our view of the stage. The General was still pretty happy about things.Here I am with The General, Liquid and Myra.I get asked why I would go to all three shows, aren't they the same? Nope. They didn't repeat any song any night. Here is what you missed out on night one:

Squirm

Big Eyed Fish

Don't Drink The Water

Pantala Naga Pampa

Rapunzel

Write a Song

You Might Die Trying

Out of My Hands (This would have been the best song of the night, but everyone was talking over it.)

Louisiana Bayou

Funny The Way It Is

Joy Ride

Corn Bread

What Would You Say

Dive In

You and Me

Good Times Bad Times (Zeppelin Cover - best song of the night)

Tripping Billies

Encore:

New Song

Stay or Leave

Jimi Thing

Shake Me Like a Monkey

Stay

And here is some Tripping Billies video

Zack's Baseball Game

Tonight I went down to Halfaer Field to watch my nephew, Zack, play baseball. Before I get into my analysis, allow me to preface this with the fact that I was a horrible little league baseball player. I only played one season, and in that one season I got exactly one hit all year. I was terrible, and I am probably not much better now. Here are a couple of pictures before I get to the video.

Sarah and Grace. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Joey, I am really slacking as an uncle and photographer.

Now just because I was one of the worst little leaguers in history doesn't mean that my baseball IQ is extremely low. Zack, here is some baseball advice from your uncle and I don't think anyone you talk to that knows anything about baseball will disagree with me.

Chicks dig the long ball.

If you want to hit the long ball, you are going to need more than your arms.

You need to start stepping into your swing.

If you want to clear the fence you are going to have to use your legs.

This video is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Your front leg barely moves, and I don't think your foot ever leaves the ground.

And if you aren't going to be going for the long ball you better start running, and that starts the moment the ball leaves the bat. Don't watch the ball...run.

That ends my critique. Here is Zack with a fielder's choice.

And in Zack's last at bat he got a single.

Last of Summerfest

Joe, Nate and BorkySunset over the Summerfest groundsJoe and LiquidNate and BorkyMe, Liquid, Nate and BorkyThis is the drum solo, or I guess you would actually call it a duet from The Airborne Toxic Event

More Summerfest

More from Summerfest. Borky and Joe at Ike ReillyIke ReillyBorky and some girl, weird.U2 Zoo.

This one is kind of strange. Here is some video of a guy who really loves Baba O'Riley, but then some guy who loves the song even more pops into my frame. Check it out.