Looking for Gold with Maps
It can become something of an obsession, or something of a great pleasure, or sometimes they can both be the same thing. The idea of a map somewhere, perhaps buried in a bottle underneath a tree in someone’s yard , is an old fantasy that speaks to children. Well, it’s one that’s supposed to speak to children, but it’s appeal extends to nearly everyone. Buried treasure isn’t just an obsession for story books, because there really are places in the world where people look for gold.
The important thing to keep in mind, perhaps, is that it really is about the present moment and not the outcome. Taking a Florida map in hand, and trying to find the places where the pirate’s treasure might be, can be a maddening enterprise, unless one remembers that Florida is a lovely place to be. And those places where the pirate ships sunk are usually inhabited by museum staff, and don’t want people looking for gold.
It becomes a metaphorical idea, then, to look for treasure. In the looking, there are great moments that happen to everyone who loves to travel. In that case, then, any East coast map will do, and it doesn’t have to be a journey for real gold. The real gold is found in the moment, and that’s a secret that even the pirates couldn’t keep secret.
The Evolution of Video Game Software
There has been a lot of progress over the years in terms of video game software. Video games have gone from being computer nerd experiments to being something that most people want to play. Game Software has gone from being something that you have to spend painstaking hours downloading, or you have to buy a large bulky console with just the one game installed on it. Now you can hop on the Internet and download the newest game. There are a number of sites that will let you do this, and not all of them are equal.
Some of these sites focus solely on games that you will have to pay them for. You will sometimes get a review or a preview version to let you know what the game will be like, but other than that there is no way to know if you will like it. Other sites will focus on free games that can be downloaded and used right away. Most often there is a mix between these two, with the free games enticing you in and the pay for games being the way the company can keep the free games on the site at all. Sometimes the pay for games will have more features than the free games did and are often worth the small fee to download them. Some of them are even large enough that they will need guides and walkthroughs.
Met to Get Stung by Sting
So Sting has already played Carnegie Hall, and no doubt, it was the result of practice, practice, practice. A lifetime of musical accomplishments certainly helped, as well as being a charismatic figure with striking good looks that seem to improve with age. There’s something to all the yoga and other interesting physical fitness regimens that he’s been practicing over the years. It will all be put to the test, and one he will most certainly pass, when Sting plays the Met in July .
There are lots of moments like these that make New York a place to be. It hasn’t lost its edge at all, and probably never will. The steady stream of young artists coming to test their mettle in one of the world’s most difficult crucibles means that there’s always something new and interesting. The discerning citizens, along with the many visitors who frequent New York’s hotels , are a ready audience for work by established artists, along with the tried and true artists who have reached maturity.
Sting may be mature, but there’s plenty of boyish charm left to make a whole new generation jealous or swooning, and the work always goes in new directions. Sting is perhaps entering another great phase of experimentation, and the show in New York will combine his own music with some classical variations that sound stunning in theory.
They’ll likely be wildly successful, pleasing the large crowd that’s bound to show up, but there is always a chance that something might go wrong, and the new direction might not be a perfect match for the cultural moment. But that’s what’s always kept his work so very interesting. The early work with the Police mixed forms well enough to re-create punk rock when it needed new life, and as old fans complained when they were getting too commercial, another generation began to notice that there was something compelling here.
That particular story has had multiple repetitions in every phase of Sting’s career, and enough to suggest that this is another musical direction, and one that will lead to new honey.
Erykah Badu At One with Paris
Paris has a particularly unusual appeal for artists in any number of mediums, with a population that is very cosmopolitan, worldly, and critical. In many respects, Paris has historically been the center of world culture in many epochs, and many different art movements. Today, there is still a lively atmosphere that’s infused with both past and present, and this makes it a city worth visiting more than once in a lifetime. Thankfully, the hotels in Paris do live up to the most romantic expectations, and the city’s sights are as breath-taking as one could imagine.
In terms of musical artists, the taste is exquisite, and one of the wonders of the world would be to see a favorite artist play here. Later this summer, music lovers will get an amazing opportunity to hear some phenomenal sounds in the city as Erykah Badu plays Paris . The city has a certain love for the eclectic, the bold, and daring, and the sensual, and she is all that, and a bag of chips.
Her new album, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, is a continuation of her lifelong experiment in being Erykah Badu. This album is a mix of all the styles she’s been pushing toward since the birth of Seven, and is also, at the same time, a recapturing of some of the more classic elements of her work. It’s a perfect moment for her to play Olympia Bruno , and not only because it’s a perfect venue for an international star who needs a lot of room for her fans.
It’s also a moment to be marked, and the venue is auspicious for her. There is a harmony in the location that blends with her own particular spiritual outlook, and it’s one that’s certainly present in the music. She takes turns, and heads down long tangents that sometimes appear to be fruitless, only to reveal at the 11th hour, there is a scheme behind it. Or, at the very least, some kind intelligence, giving her work equal portions of honey and urgency.
Joan Jett Runs Away in San Diego
It’s hard to find a voice in rock and roll as loud and true as Joan Jett’s, and there can’t be a better time to hear her play live and loud than this 4th of July. It’s a free show, at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for the San Diego County Fair . The fair’s been around a lot longer than rock and roll, but the history of each institution is pretty electric.
The fair began in the 1880s as an agricultural event, so that the farmers in the area could share secrets and showcase their successes. They added a racetrack in the 1930s, to generate more income. That was a fairly easy stretch, because the horses had already been shown at the fair since its beginnings, and the west coast is a spectacular place for races.
Joan Jett’s beginnings weren’t as calm and wholesome as a fair, but that’s rock and roll. The new biopic this year, the Runaways , goes through the early years in Jett’s career, and her band before she went solo with the Blackhearts. The Runaways were an experiment that went well, and ultimately went in too many directions at once. With the likes of Lita Ford and Cherie Currie in the lineup, there were plenty of arguments about the artistic direction, and the band split after just a few years of working together.
Meanwhile, Jett was off and running with her journeys into punk rock styles, and these turned out to be the perfect touch to her special blend of 3-chord classic rock. It gave her an edge that no one else could ever touch, and it will be a great thing to see at the free show for San Diego’s Independence Day . Locals will get a great treat, and out of town guests with bookings at hotels in San Diego are in a perfect position to take advantage of a rare opportunity.
San Diego loves rock and roll!
Michael Buble Isn’t Surprised at Success
There has been a lot of talk about Michael Buble as of late. At the recent Juno awards he took home a number of the ones he had been nominated for. This came in the middle of his world wide tour that started last March and is set to continue on until sometime next year. However, he says that he didn’t really want to sing the songs that he put into his last album, not because they were bad, but because they were showing off the true him inside at that moment. It was a moment of complete openness with his audience, and while it didn’t take away the pains of the break up, it somehow made it a little less. He had a lot more to say as well, and some of it can be found here.
Ray LaMontagne On Tour In Boston
Ray LaMontagne is doing great with his eighth studio album coming out and getting ready to head back out on tour. This time it’s not a very large tour, but he definitely covers some ground fast. He will start off in Boston in August and will travel down through Arizona by September. Although it will be short, the tickets have been flying off the shelf since they went on sale, so if you want to see him, you are going to have to act fast.
Handsome Furs in Singapore
It isn’t often you get to see some of the tour footage from over seas. Here is a video of some of the tour with the Handsome Furs. These people aren’t used to Singapore.
They are still on tour if I’m not mistaken, so there are still more concerts to see if you are there and have the time.
New CD Release Wide Spread Panic on a New Tour
Wide Spread Panic has put out their new CD, Dirty Side Down, and set off onto a new tour. Ok, they haven’t set off quite yet, but they have the dates set out and they are ready to get out of there and meet some more of their fans. They did kick off the tour at the New Orleans Jazz festival, which they are invited back to often, and the tour plans on going on through July. Some of their songs are available for streaming on their website.
Rescue Me Comedy in NYC
The kid from Boston keeps kicking it out in New York City. Denis Leary rocked the comedy world in the early 90s, and became a voice of the city very early on in his career. If one can call the mid-thirties early. He’d struggled as an actor in Boston for years before scoring a break for MTV, becoming the fast-talking face for a series of short films that got attention. He was certainly seeking attention, and the delivery was so urgent, so impatient, and so impeccably funny, that people were compelled to listen, and the years of struggling started to pan out.
Years later, it’s still panning out. He became a celebrity known for his acting ability finally, after he’d switched from film to television, and became the voice of firefighters during a particularly rough time in an already rough history. Just because he’s hit the big time being what he loves to be, doesn’t mean he’s not still the fast-talking, angry, side-splitting comic. The Rescue Me Comedy Tour certainly proves that the iron is still hot, very, very hot. The show is coming to New York City for two dates at the end of June, and that’s more than enough reason to start booking the city hotel now.
Seeing him play in New York is a very different thing than seeing him anywhere else. The jokes are terribly, terrifically funny in Houston, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, but there are references to the city that only speak to the ones who live here. And the exaggerated bravado, and testosterone-heavy rants, seem to be echoing a sensibility of the east coast while they are also mocking it. That’s one of the most appealing things about this great mind, that he can skirt that line between inhabiting a role and simultaneously pointing out its hypocrisy.
That’s a line that few actors are able to walk, and in the lineage of stand-up comics, the list is even smaller. Sometimes Lenny Bruce could do it, and Moms Mabley may have invented it, but right now Denis Leary is living in it, and we get to enjoy the ride with him.